Left: Author Michael Copperman wrote about his friend and fellow Oregon wrestler Kenny Cox for his novel. Right: “Seeking Kenny: A Wrestler’s Journey” published in June of 2026.
Left: Courtesy of Mashal Copperman; Right: Courtesy of University of Iowa Press
Kenny Cox lived a life of paradoxes.
He strived for success as a wrestler through high school in Eugene and while attending the University of Oregon. Cox was recognized as the best high school wrestler in the nation in 1997.
Off the mat, he pushed himself to live in a way that often defied societal expectations. Cox walked from Oregon to Mexico and back. In his final adventure, he lived in the wilderness of Hawaii for weeks with limited supplies.
Author Michael Copperman is a former wrestler and he spent much of his athletic career emulating Cox. Copperman’s new book, “Seeking Kenny: A Wrestler’s Journey,” shares the story of his training partner and friend, a journey that ultimately ends with Cox’s unexpected death in Hawaii.
Copperman spoke with OPB “Morning Edition” host Jess Hazel about the book.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jess Hazel: Wrestling seems to encapsulate a lot of what Western society expects in traditionally masculine roles. You describe ways Kenny both strived to meet those expectations and in others subverted them. How did you approach writing about that?
Michael Copperman: Well, I thought that in many ways, at least in his high school wrestling career, Kenny was this sort of archetypal warrior gentleman. The kind of person who would open doors for old ladies, give to charity and never swear. And he really tried to pour himself into sport in a way that would sort of purify him, sanctify him and bear him to glory.
At the same time, in doing that, he ultimately needed to find a place for himself in the world and a way to live that was more than just being a wrestler. Understanding that he would always be a wrestler, but that he also needed to find another place in the world. That was the story that I wanted to tell. And I wanted to tell it through the eyes of all of the people who he’d known and loved the best.
Hazel: As you just mentioned, this book features a lot of interviews with different people who knew and loved Kenny. What was it like to have these conversations with people, many of whom you have a long history with, and then ask them to share their memories and their grief?
Copperman: It was really quite incredible that his family were so open with me because I could not have written this book without them. But it was also a bit of a personal journey for me. I think I had lost a combined eight or nine different [wrestling] state titles to different people who I interviewed for this book, because a lot of them were elite wrestlers who became Kenny’s best friends in college at the University of Oregon. And I had competed against them in high school where I was also elite. This book in many ways is me seeking Kenny and trying to understand Kenny’s story, so that I could understand what had happened to myself, trying so hard to follow his North Star.
Hazel: Yeah, that leads perfectly into another question I had. For much of the book, as much as you are in search of Kenny, he is in search of answers to some of life’s most pressing existential questions. We can never know for certain if he found satisfying answers, but what about you? What discoveries about yourself felt most important while following Kenny’s journey?
Copperman: Tracing his journey and trying to sort of understand what had happened to him, I had to look at that part of myself who had believed that the only thing that gave my life value was my achievements on the mat. I was able to understand what Kenny was looking for is closer to what I would like to find in my own life as well. Which is, a way to live in the world and a way to be in relation to both nature — and also to my fellow humans on this planet — in a way that is in balance. That takes into account our responsibility to one another, that tries to honor the land and the environment that we live in. So, in many ways trying to seek Kenny was the best possible way for me to come to terms with some of my own demons and also to look ahead.
Hazel: The way you write about nature really popped off the page for me. Sometimes you engage all five senses. I remember a scene where you eat a berry and then explain what the taste and the amount of seeds mean or say about the season that you’re in. What kind of details do you focus on while gathering material for your writing so that you can capture that later, or does that just happen naturally?
Copperman: In that scene you’re thinking of, I traveled with Kenny’s father out the McKenzie River Highway to a cabin Kenny had loved to go to as a child. In all of those cases, in traveling, in looking and thinking, I’m often taking notes and trying to think about my senses. But I often wrote most immediately after those experiences so that I could really capture those things vividly. The natural world was so important to Kenny: the wilderness in Oregon, the whole entire length of the Pacific Coast that he trekked barefoot — from Oregon to Baja and back — the Nāpali Coast. I wanted to take all of that in and try to make it live.
Hazel: What do you think the role of storytelling is when it comes to how people process loss?
Copperman: For me at least, I think that stories can help us reckon. I think that they can help us mourn more fully, if we’re able to lean in and listen. It is a way of communally reckoning with the tragic loss of what was really a young man. He died at 31. There is real hope in story. Not that story itself is transformative, but I think that it can be.
