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Patricia Hampl

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Patricia Hampl’s most recent book is The Florist’s Daughter, winner of numerous “best” and “year end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime, published in 2006 and now in paperback, was also one of the Times Notable Books; a portion was chosen for The Best Spiritual Writing 2005.

Patricia Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education, her memoir about her Czech heritage, awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. This book and subsequent works have established her as an influential figure in the rise of autobiographical writing in the past 25 years.

She is the author as well of two collection...more Patricia Hampl’s most recent book is The Florist’s Daughter, winner of numerous “best” and “year end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime, published in 2006 and now in paperback, was also one of the Times Notable Books; a portion was chosen for The Best Spiritual Writing 2005.

Patricia Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education, her memoir about her Czech heritage, awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. This book and subsequent works have established her as an influential figure in the rise of autobiographical writing in the past 25 years.

She is the author as well of two collections of poetry, Woman before an Aquarium, and Resort and Other Poems. And she has published Spillville, a meditation on Antonin Dvorak's 1893 summer in Iowa, with engravings by Steven Sorman. Virgin Time, about her Catholic upbringing and an inquiry into contemplative life, is available in a recent paperback.

I Could Tell You Stories, her collection of essays on memory and imagination, was a finalist in 2000 for the National Book Critics Circle Awards in General Nonfiction. Four of her books have been named "Notable Books" of the year by The New York Times Book Review. A Romantic Education appeared in a new edition with a post-Cold War “Afterword” in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in 1999. In 2001, Carnegie Mellon Press chose Resort and Other Poems for its Contemporary Classics series.

In 2004 Borealis Books (of the Minnesota Historical Society Press) published The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald edited and with an introduction by Patricia Hampl. And in fall 2008 Tell Me True: Memoir, History and Writing a Life came out from the same imprint, co-edited by Ms. Hampl and Elaine Tyler May with essays by 14 memoirists including the editors.

Ms. Hampl’s fiction, poems, reviews, essays and travel pieces have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.

She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Bush Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (twice, in poetry and prose), Ingram Merrill Foundation, and Djerassi Foundation. In 1990 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Ms. Hampl is Regents Professor and McKnight Distinguished Professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where she teaches fall semesters in the MFA program of the English Department. She is also a member of the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program. She regularly gives readings, lectures and workshops across the country and internationally.(less)

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Books by Patricia Hampl

Average rating: 3.85 · 2,169 ratings · 336 reviews · 23 distinct works

	The Florist's Daughter 3.34 avg rating — 410 ratings — published 2007 — 5 editions	My rating:
	I Could Tell You Stories 3.76 avg rating — 140 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime 3.27 avg rating — 96 ratings — published 2006 — 4 editions	My rating:
	A Romantic Education 3.68 avg rating — 74 ratings — published 1981 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life 3.67 avg rating — 76 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	St Paul Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald by Patricia Hampl, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dave Page (Editor) 3.97 avg rating — 36 ratings — published 2004	My rating:
	Spillville: A Collaboration by Patricia Hampl, Steven Sorman (Illustrator) 3.93 avg rating — 15 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life by Patricia Hampl (Editor), Elaine Tyler May (Editor), Andre Aciman (Contributor) 3.15 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Burning Bright: An Anthology 5.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1995	My rating:
	The Houghton Mifflin Anthology Of Short Fiction 4.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1988 — 3 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Patricia Hampl

“You can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.”
― Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories

tags: writing

14 people liked it

“I waste my life. I want to. It's the thing to do with a life. We were wrong about work--it isn't the best thing, no matter how much you love it. Wasting time is better.”
― Patricia Hampl, The Florist's Daughter

5 people liked it

“If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport.”
― Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories

3 people liked it

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