Totally globalized Muhammad Cohen was born in New York City, served as a US diplomat in East Africa, masqueraded as a city planner in Queens and Brooklyn, and wrote about baseball in the Bronx, Washington and Baltimore before moving to Hong Kong in 1995.
A graduate of Yale and Stanford’s Creative Writing program, Cohen is Asia editor at large for Clarion’s iGaming Business. He’s previously been a contributor to Forbes, special correspondent for Macau Business magazine and editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming. His work has been featured regularly in Asia Times, the South China Morning Post’s This Week in Asia and The Guardian.
Cohen’s writing on business, politics, media and culture in Asia has run in Time, Columbia Journalism Review, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Slate and Salon. His fiction has been published in Asia Literary Review and the Hong Kong Writers Circle’s Love and Lust collection. He blogs at Muhammad Cohen on WordPress. His blog article Twenty reasons Barack Obama stinks finished first in reader voting and was selected as a finalist for 3QuarksDaily.com 2010 Prize in Politics.
Hong Kong On Air, a tale of the 1997 handover, television news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie from Blacksmith Books, is Cohen’s first published novel. One reviewer calls Hong Kong On Air “the great American Hong Kong handover novel.” Cohen has given readings in Hong Kong, New York, at the Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival and Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali, where he chronicled the experience for LonelyPlanet.com.
Cohen got his big break in TV news when he called CNN for a job the day bullets began flying in Gulf War I. After rising through the ranks to producer at CNN’s Washington bureau, Cohen moved to Hong Kong for six months to assist the startup of CNBC Asia in 1995; he stayed and became a Hong Kong permanent resident in 2004. In Hong Kong, Cohen has also worked as an editor at Bloomberg News, Hong Kong Standard and South China Morning Post, and he served as Asia regional communications manager for a US multinational.
Through his coverage, Cohen has become a recognized thought leader in the Asian casino industry for work that often challenges conventional wisdom and examines issues from unique perspectives. He has covered the development of casinos in Macau, Singapore and across Asia, from Sri Lanka to Saipan, Vladivostok to Brisbane, as well as in the US and Europe. He presented and moderated at the Gaming Industry Executive Summit 2009, Asia Gaming Congress 2011 in Singapore and Asia Gaming and Hospitality Congress 2012 in Macau. Cohen chaired the opening session of Clarion’s Japan Gaming Congress 2017 in Tokyo and presented there. He has appeared as a speaker and panelist at International Association of Gaming Advisors (IAGA) events in Vancouver and Macau.
In addition to this own writing, Cohen edited The Poker Face of Wall Street (John Wiley & Sons, 2006) and Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street (John Wiley & Sons, 2011) for author Aaron Brown, a leading financial risk analyst and poker player. Cohen has also contributed to several Lonely Planet guide books, including the inaugural Lonely Planet Guide to Borneo and the ninth Lonely Planet Guide to Indonesia.
Since the late 1980s Cohen has taught writing academically and to working professionals. Cohen has been a faculty member at the US Department of Agriculture Graduate School in Washington, DC, and the University of Phoenix. He has guest lectured on writing and literature at institutions including Columbia University, Brooklyn College and UNLV Singapore. Combining his experience in the classroom and corporate communications with his multicultural perspective, he developed Writing Clinic, interactive seminars that help writers at every skill level communicate more effectively. Simply put, Writing Clinic is where writing gets better.
Born Jewish and married to a Muslim princess, Cohen addresses religious and civic groups on “Muhammad Cohen’s Jewish Identity” and was a global adviser to New Foundations for Peace, building bridges between Muhammads and Cohens.