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Amy Hassinger

Goodreads author profile

born

November 19, 1972 in The United States

gender

female

website

http://www.amyhassinger.com

genre

Literature & Fiction, History, Religion & Spirituality

influences

Virginia Woolf, Andre Dubus, Alice Munro, John Gardner, Annie Lamott,...more

member since

June 2007

About this author

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I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb ten minutes outside of Boston. As a result—so close to a cosmopolitan center and yet so far—I have been plagued my entire life with the sense that someone somewhere is having a better time than I am. I graduated from Barnard College in New York City, where despite feeling constantly overwhelmed by New York and by all my beautiful and brilliant classmates, I managed to write several short stories and even win a prize for one of them. After college, I moved to the Never Neverland of San Francisco, where I taught middle school and spent my hard-earned cash on burritos and beer. I loved the Bay area, but it was just too perfect and expensive a place to actually live, so after two years, I followed my...more I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb ten minutes outside of Boston. As a result—so close to a cosmopolitan center and yet so far—I have been plagued my entire life with the sense that someone somewhere is having a better time than I am. I graduated from Barnard College in New York City, where despite feeling constantly overwhelmed by New York and by all my beautiful and brilliant classmates, I managed to write several short stories and even win a prize for one of them. After college, I moved to the Never Neverland of San Francisco, where I taught middle school and spent my hard-earned cash on burritos and beer. I loved the Bay area, but it was just too perfect and expensive a place to actually live, so after two years, I followed my fiancé to Old Town, Maine, where we found an apartment just up the street from the canoe factory and a paper plant that smelled like rotten broccoli when it rained. There I convinced the fine people at the University of Maine Press to hire me to write, of all things, a Maine history textbook. Finding Katahdin: An Exploration of Maine's Past was published in 2001, and the teacher's guide is due out shortly on the web.

My husband and I then moved to Iowa, where we wore ruts in the old Lincoln Highway between Ames and Iowa City, traveling back and forth between our respective graduate schools. I graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2001 with most of my first novel, Nina: Adolescence, completed. I had another two months to finish the book before my daughter was born, which I did, to my amazement, and then didn't look at the thing for another 9 months while I recovered from the shock of motherhood.

Nina: Adolescence was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons and Listen and Live Audio in 2003, a few months after my family and I moved to Okemos, Michigan. In the meantime, I had begun work on my second novel, The Priest's Madonna, which is set in the south of France, and which conveniently required a week-long research trip during Michigan’s dreary month of March. The Priest's Madonna took another two years to write, during which time we moved once more to Urbana, Illinois, where I think we might actually stay put for a while.

When I’m not writing, I’m playing with my kids, practicing yoga, reading, cooking, eating, walking my dog, chatting with friends, or singing. In my next life, I plan to be a jazz diva or an enlightened monk. Maybe both.
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Books by Amy Hassinger

Average rating: 3.40 · 140 ratings · 23 reviews · 6 distinct works

	Nina: Adolescence 3.65 avg rating — 60 ratings — published 2003 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Priest's Madonna 3.21 avg rating — 77 ratings — published 2006 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Nina, een meisje by Amy Hassinger (Goodreads Author), Lidwien Biekmann (Translator) 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2003	My rating:
	De Maria legende 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating	My rating:
	Finding Katahdin: An exploration of Maine's past 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2001	My rating:
	El Legado de La Madonna 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2009	My rating:

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Amy made a comment on Mark's review of Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction "You know what--I realized after I wrote that comment that I was writing about the wrong book! I actually did read Burning Down the House a couple year...more "
Sep 19, 2008 06:57pm · see review
Amy is now friends with Mollyodell
Jul 28, 2008 05:57pm
Amy gave to: Dalva by Jim Harrison	My rating:
Jul 27, 2008 07:20pm
Amy gave to: Powers, Vol. 1: Who Killed Retro Girl? by Brian Michael Bendis	My rating:
Jul 27, 2008 07:18pm
Amy gave to: The Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry read in September, 2008	My rating:
Required reading for everyone on the planet.
Jul 27, 2008 07:18pm · see review
Amy added: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa read in September, 2008	My rating:
Jul 27, 2008 07:17pm
Amy gave to: Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass	My rating:
Jul 27, 2008 07:16pm
Amy gave to: Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee read in August, 2008	My rating:
Jul 27, 2008 07:16pm
Amy gave to: The Question of Bruno: Stories by Aleksandar Hemon read in January, 2006	My rating:
Sep 09, 2007 08:01pm