Amy Hempel
| Amy Hempel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 14, 1951 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Short story writer, essayist, journalist, professor |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Fiction |
Amy Hempel (born December 14, 1951) is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at Bennington College and University of Florida.
Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois. She moved to California at age 16, which is where much of her early fiction takes place. She moved to New York City in the mid-seventies. There she connected with writer and editor Gordon Lish, with whom she maintained a long professional relationship. She currently lives in Florida and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Florida. She was the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer of English at Harvard University from 2009-2014. Additionally, she teaches fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College. She has previously taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Duke University, The New School, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. She is also a contributing editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review.
A dog enthusiast, Hempel is a founding board member of the Deja Foundation.
Hempel is a former student of Gordon Lish, in whose workshop she wrote several of her first stories. Lish was so impressed with her work that he helped her publish her first collection, Reasons to Live (1985), which includes "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried", the first story she ever wrote. Hempel credits Lish's influence for the lack of pressure she has felt to become a novelist rather than a short story writer. Originally published in TriQuarterly in 1983, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" is one of the most extensively anthologized stories of the last quarter century.
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