Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel is an American short story writer, journalist, and university teacher born on December 14, 1951, in Chicago.
Hempel was educated at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her career has encompassed both fiction and journalism, and she has also worked as a university teacher, bringing her experience as a writer into an instructional context. These roles together have shaped the professional arc of a writer working in English within the United States.
Hempel has received two notable distinctions in recognition of her work. She was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award, a prize given in recognition of excellence in the short story form. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a competitive award granted to individuals who have demonstrated capacity in their creative or scholarly fields.
The short story is the form most consistently associated with Hempel's career as a writer. Her recognition through the PEN/Malamud Award, which is specifically tied to the short story, alongside her Guggenheim Fellowship, places her among American writers who have worked seriously within that genre. As a citizen of the United States writing in English, her career has moved across the roles of short story writer, journalist, and university teacher, and it is the short story that her most formally documented honors address.
Quotes by Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel's insights on:
Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We’ve read our Shakespeare.
When she sees him, Holly says, it’s like the sunsets at the beach – once the sun drops, the sand chills quickly. Then it’s like a lot of times that were good ten minutes ago and don’t count now.
Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good?
I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you’d find in a cartoon bubble.
I probably have less revision than those who have that wonderful rush of story to tell – you know, I can’t wait to tell you what happened the other day. It comes tumbling out and maybe then they go back and refine. I kind of envy that way of working, but I just have never done it.
The only time the word baby doesn’t scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.
Obviously, in journalism, you’re confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it’s in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.
I’ve always known when I start a story what the last line is. It’s always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don’t know how it’s going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.