Starting with 'one good sentence'

 

“Journalism taught me how to write asentence that would make someone want to read the next one.   I do feel that if you can write one goodsentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a goodstory.” – Amy Hempel

 

Bornin Chicago on Dec. 14, 1951 Hempel spent her formative years in California, thesetting for much of her fiction.  She haswritten for numerous magazines and newspapers while also teaching – currentlyas Professor of Creative Writing at the Michener Center for Writers at theUniversity of Texas.

 

Oneof only a handful of U.S. writers to build a reputation solely on shortfiction, she jump-started her career by producing what has arguably been one ofthe most anthologized short stories ever written, "In the Cemetery WhereAl Jolson Is Buried.”  That 1985 storyand nearly every other one of her first 20 years’ efforts are in heraward-winning The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel.  It’s truly a primer on how short storiesshould be written.   Hempel’s most recentbook is 2019’s Sing to It.

“I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the ‘What-happens?’, butI'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effectsof whatever happened on the characters and the people,” she said about her writingstyle.

  

“I’ve always knownwhen I start a story what the last line is.  It’s always been the case . . . I don’t knowhow it’s going to get there, but I seem to need that destination.”

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