Acclaimed Short Story Writer to Visit Campus

The Newcomb College Center for Research on Women will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program March 14–20 with Amy Hempel, a critically acclaimed author of short fiction.

Hempel

Amy Hempel, this year's Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence, has received much praise for her short stories. She'll share writing tips with students and the public next week.


Hempel will give a reading at 7:30 p.m. on Monday (March 15) in the Kendall Cram Lecture Hall of the Lavin-Bernick Center on the Tulane uptown campus. The reading is free and open to the public. She also will spend the week visiting classes and talking with undergraduate students about their work during informal meetings.

Hempel has written four collections of short stories: Reasons to Live (1985), At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990), Tumble Home (1997) and The Dog of the Marriage (2005). Her most recent publication is The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006). Her story, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried," is one of the most anthologized stories of the past quarter century.

Born in Chicago in 1951, Hempel lives in New York City and teaches writing at Harvard University.

Dana Zale Gerard, a 1985 Newcomb College graduate, established the Zale Writer-in-Residence Program in 1985. An annual gift from the M. B. and Edna Zale Foundation of Dallas made the program possible, and Barnes & Noble College Booksellers has supported it since 2006.

This year, Martha McCarty Kimmerling, a 1963 Newcomb College graduate, fully endowed the program on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. To honor Kimmerling, the name has been changed to the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence Program, one of the premier programs of the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute.

Coordinated through the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, and facilitated by a committee of Newcomb-Tulane College students and faculty, the program has brought a renowned woman writer to campus each year.