Amy Hempel

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Amy Hempel (born December 14, 1951 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) is a short story writer, journalist and university professor at Bennington College. She currently lives in New York. She is a former student of Gordon Lish, in whose workshop she wrote several of her first stories. Gordon Lish was so impressed with her work that he helped her publish the stories in a book, Reasons to Live (1985), which includes the her first story[1] “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried”, one of the most extensively anthologized stories of the last quarter century. Hempel has produced three other collections, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990), which includes the story “The Harvest”; Tumble Home (1997); and The Dog of the Marriage (2005). She co-edited (with Jim Shepard) Unleashed – Poems by Writers’ Dogs (1995) which includes contributions by Edward Albee, John Irving, Denis Johnson, Gordon Lish, Arthur Miller and many others. She writes articles, essays and short stories for such publications as Vanity Fair, Interview, Bomb, GQ, ELLE, Harper's, The Quarterly, and Playboy. Hempel has also participated in The Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. In 2006 The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel was released, a book containing all four of her original released works.

Generally termed a “minimalist” writer, along with Raymond Carver and Mary Robison, Hempel is one of a handful writers who has built a reputation based solely on short fiction. Chuck Palahniuk wrote of her work:

Every sentence isn't just crafted, it's tortured over. Every quote and joke, what Hempel tosses out comedian-style, is something funny or profound enough you'll remember it for years. The same way, I sense, Hempel has remembered it, held on to it, saved it for a place where it could really shine. Scary jewelry metaphor, but her stories are studded and set with these compelling bits. Chocolate chip cookies with no bland "cookie" matrix, just nothing but chips and chopped walnuts. [2]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Reasons to Live (1985)
  • At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990)
  • Tumble Home (1997)
  • The Dog of the Marriage (2005)
  • The Collected Stories (2006)

[edit] External links

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