Amy Hempel

Considered a minimalist, one of a handful of writers who made a reputation and a career based solely on short fiction, usually published individually and then gathered in collections. Most recent volume, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006), won the Ambassador Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Published in Harper's, Vanity Fair, GQ, and The Yale Review, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Her first story, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried, is one of the most extensively anthologized of the last quarter century. Honors include the 2008 Rea Award for short story, the 2009 PEN/Malamud Award for short story, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the United States Artists Foundation.