Peter S. Cook is Associate Professor in the Department of ASL-English Interpretation and an internationally known Deaf performing artist whose work incorporates American Sign Language, pantomime, storytelling, acting, and movement.Since 1986, Cook has traveled extensively both nationally and internationally with Kenny Lerner to promote the Flying Words Project and ASL literature. Cook has been featured nationally in numerous festivals, including the Jonesboro National Storytelling Festival; Oklahoma City Winter Tales; Illinois Storytelling Festival; Indiana Hoosier Storytelling Festival; Eugene, Oregon Multi-Cultural Festival; The Deaf Way II; and the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In 2003, he was invited to the White House to join the National Book Festival. Internationally, Cook has worked with Deaf storytellers/poets in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Japan.

Kenny Lerner has performed as a co-creator and as the voice of Peter Cook in FlyingWords Project since 1984. He has also worked with other deaf artists, among them, Debbie Rennie with whom he is the co-author of “Missing Children” and “Willie.” In performance, he has developed a style of voicing that aims to support the images of an ASL poem. To Kenny, the poem is the signed imagery, while the voice is a vehicle to help hearing audiences to see the images created on the signing poet’s body. Kenny received a BA in History at Beloit College in Wisconsin and a MA in Deaf Education at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Kenny coordinated the First National ASL Literature Conference in 1991. He teaches History at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York.