He attended the Manhattan School of Music and studied composition. Cohen does not have an MFA, and has expressed disdain for the degree. In 2017, Granta Magazine named him to its decennial list of the Best Young American Writers. Cohen lived in various cities in Eastern Europe between 2001 and 2006, working as a journalist. Cohen's works have received acclaim. Witz was named a Best Book of 2010 by The Village Voice. Four New Messages was named a Best Book of 2012 by The New Yorker. Book of Numbers was named a Best Book of 2015 by The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and New York Magazine. Moving Kings was named a Best Book of 2017 by New York Magazine and Bookforum. Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction was named a Best Book of 2018 by Wired. In an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books, Harold Bloom said, "Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West, Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth, and quite possibly Book of Numbers are the four best books by Jewish writers in America. Moving Kings is a strong and rather hurtful book, but that helps validate it. Book of Numbers, however, is shatteringly powerful. I cannot think of anything by anyone in generation that is so frighteningly relevant and composed with such continuous eloquence. There are moments in it that seem to transcend our impasse." His essays have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, The Jewish Daily Forward, Nextbook, Tablet Magazine, Triple Canopy, Denver Quarterly, The Believer, The New York Observer, The London Review of Books, N+1 online, Guernica Magazine, and elsewhere. Cohen was the New Books critic for Harper's. Cohen was involved with writing the memoir of Edward Snowden, Permanent Record. Cohen, in the words of Snowden, "help to transform my rambling reminiscences and capsule manifestos into a book.” The New York Times writes: "It’s like a recursive loop of life imitating art imitating life; in Cohen’s “Book of Numbers,” published in 2015, a novelist named Joshua Cohen is hired to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mysterious tech billionaire … whose search-engine company happens to be sharing information with government agencies." The New Republic writes: "Despite Macmillan’s black op to keep the book under wraps, over the past year, New York literary circles have buzzed with the news that novelist Joshua Cohen had signed on as the famed whistle-blower’s literary interlocutor, traveling to Russia over the course of eight months to help Snowden, now 36, organize and improve his narrative."
Novels
Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto
A Heaven of Others
Witz
Book of Numbers
Moving Kings
Online Only
"PCKWCK"
About "PCKWCK": , .
Short fiction
Collections
The Quorum
Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed
Bridge & Tunnel
Four New Messages
ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction, Random House, 2018,
Stories
Mall Camp, Seasons 1 & 2 appeared in issue 143 of Granta.
Sent appeared in Issue 120 of Bomb.
Imaginary Appreciations of Myself as Hebrew Poet appeared in the Memoir Issue of Guernica Magazine.
McDonald's appeared in the May 2012 issue of Triple Canopy.
The College Borough appeared in the July 2012 issue of Harper's.
"Fat" appeared in the December 7, 2012 edition of Tablet Magazine.
