Patricia Hampl

Patricia Hampl (born March 12, 1946) is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.

Hampl was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Stanley and Mary Hampl. She attended the University of Minnesota, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1968. Hampl earned her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa in 1970.

Hampl worked as an editor of Minnesota Monthly from 1973 to 1975 and as a freelance writer and editor from 1975 to 1979. Between 1979 and 1996, she occupied the positions of visiting assistant professor, associate professor, and professor of English at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. Hampl has also served as an educator at Ball State University and West Virginia University, and as a faculty member for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1995 and 1996. She is a contributing editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review. Since 2005, she has been a member of the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program, hosted by Prague's Charles University and Western Michigan University. In 2015, Hampl was an adjunct faculty member in the writing program at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

Hampl is best known for her memoirs. Her first memoir, A Romantic Education, dealt with her Czech heritage and won Hampl the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship in 1981.Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life, another memoir, dealt with her Roman Catholic upbringing. Hampl's short story “The Bill Collector’s Vacation” was awarded a 1999 Pushcart Prize.

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