[7] Prior to beginning a writing career, Copaken was a war photographer from 1988 to 1992, and a television producer at ABC and NBC from 1992 to 1998.

[5] For the former, she was based in Paris and Moscow, while shooting assignments on conflicts in Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Romania, Pakistan, Israel, Soviet Union and other places.

[10] In 2009, she released a book of comic essays, Hell is Other Parents, some of which appeared in the New Yorker and The New York Times.

[14][15] She has written several articles for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Observer, The Atlantic, Business Insider, The Nation and others.

[20][21][22] In November 2017 in Oprah.com, she published a 3,500-word account of her supracervical hysterectomy, adenomyosis and trachelectomy, and her subsequent recovery in Nepal.

[23] In July 2018 in The Atlantic, in an essay pertaining to Roe V. Wade, she wrote that three of her five pregnancies were unplanned and that she had undergone two abortions.

[32][33] In March 2018 in The Atlantic, she wrote about The New York Observer editor Ken Kurson sexually harassing her.