Robin Hemley
Encyclopedia
Robin Hemley, born May 28, 1958 in New York City
, is a Jewish American nonfiction and fiction writer, author of eight books, most recently, DO-OVER! In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments (Little, Brown, May, 2009). His other writing includes Turning Life Into Fiction (2006), Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists (anthology, with Michael Martone, 2004), Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday (2003), Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness (1998), The Big Ear, stories (1994), The Last Studebaker, a novel (1992), All You Can Eat, stories (1988), and The Mouse Town, stories (1987).
, and his father, Cecil Hemley, was co-founder of The Noonday Press.
He graduated from Indiana University in Comparative Literature in 1980 and from the University of Iowa
with an MFA in Fiction in 1982.
He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship
as well as fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Ohioana Library Association, and the Washington State Arts Council.
He has had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony
, the Fine Arts Work Center
in Provincetown, Ragdale, and the Edward Albee Foundation.
His awards include two Pushcart Prizes for Fiction, first place in the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, and the Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction.
Since 2004, he has taught at the University of Iowa where he was hired as the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program, and since 2000 he has taught at Vermont College (now Vermont College of Fine Arts
) where he served as Faculty Chair for three years. He has also taught at the University of Utah
, Western Washington University
, St. Lawrence University
, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
.
At Western Washington University, he edited The Bellingham Review for five years and founded the Tobias Wolff
Award for Fiction and the Annie Dillard
Award for Nonfiction. At the University of Iowa, he founded the NonfictioNow Conference in 2005.
He lives in Iowa City, Iowa
, is married, and has four daughters.
"Robin Hemley has pulled out all the stops and managed to take that familiar wistful longing—the if-only sensation we have in regarding the past—and turned disappointment and chagrin into exhilarating time-travel. This series of reprises from childhood and youth has a charm that goes beyond a backward look, and becomes a touching mid-life memoir in which the heart of a child is soothed and liberated." — Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist's Daughter
"While it is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, what makes this book so absolutely endearing is the honesty and tender, humane insight of the author, and his reluctant, hard-won willingness to forgive his former self. A screwball premise winningly pulled off, Do-Over! should charm readers everywhere." — Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body
"Do-Over! is one of the funniest, wisest, most perfectly observed books I've ever read. Robin Hemley possesses a keen insight into the all-too-human wish to rectify our past mistakes. He also knows that we are better for having made them." — Bernard Cooper, author of The Bill From My Father
"Hemley, a thoughtful novelist and memoirist, painstakingly unravels a dense snarl of romantic notions, political agendas, scientific rivalries, thorny personalities, and rampant misperceptions to disclose a far stranger tale." — Booklist
"What's best about the book is Hemley's insistence on ambiguity; the truth, he notes, cannot be known because there is no one truth, but many different, overlapping strategies for interpreting the world.... By staking out a middle ground between Elizalde and the skeptics, Hemley enlarges Invented Eden, turning it into a book not just about one tribe but about the way we consider tribal culture as a whole." — David Ulin, Chicago Tribune
"Robin Hemley's book is a brave and wholly convincing attempt to find the truth concerning the 'anthropological fraud of the century'." — James Hamilton-Paterson, London Review of Books
"An enlightening and even inspiring guide to utilizing elements of one's own life and of one's family history as fodder for writing novels and short stories." — Booklist
"If you write fiction, listen up, look around, and take note. Why strain your brain making things up when you can transform real life into stories worth telling? Hemley recommends keeping a journal ('It's akin to an artist's sketchbook'), writing down your dreams (the unconscious is a great source of free material), and mining all those crazy stories your grandmother used to tell. Then combine bits and pieces from these sources, take one great mind leap (and many drafts) and—voila—you've got fiction." — Amazon.com
"Hemley, author of Turning Life into Fiction (1994), has not been able to write about his sister Nola until now, 25 years after her death. A young woman obsessed with the magical and the "hidden," she became overwhelmed by voices and visions. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, she soon succumbed to an inexplicable overdose of prescribed medication. It's easy to see why her story demands to be told, but everyone in Hemley's family is fascinating, and he ponders his complex legacy in a mesmerizing juggling act, combining the drama of fiction with the candor of memoir and the close scrutiny of criticism. His mother, Elaine Gottlieb Hemley, is a fiction writer, and his father, Cecil Hemley, was a poet, Isaac Singer's editor, and cofounder of Noonday Press. Nola wrote, too, and Hemley incorporates each of their voices into the tight weave of his intricate narrative, choosing wisely to abide by what could be the family motto—"Everything is open to interpretation and revision"—and allowing his readers to draw their own conclusions." — Donna Seaman, Booklist
"Hemley takes the memoir form further than mere recollection of familial events, and delves into the arena of imagination and what if. His mission to tell Nola's story is complicated by the fickleness of family members' memories, the mystic nature of much of Nola's work, and his own admission that he covets her strange and wonderful story himself. The result is a surprising and honest process of both writing and discovery--finding the "facts" and revealing the truths about the way we remember and what we try to forget. This is not a book to rush through, but one to savor and think about for a good long time." — Susan Swartwout, Amazon.com Review
"This collection of 16 stories by Robin Hemley has something for everyone.... In these stories in Hemley's third collection, someone is always trying to make sense of something. And the answer is never easy." — The Chicago Tribune
"Hemley's characters are very real people, trying to make sense of themselves in a world often indifferent to them. If readability, to some, is a cardinal sin in writing, then Hemley is guilty. And may his sentence be to continue to write with such empathy, wit, intelligence, and compassion." — Matthew F. Benedict, South Bend Tribune
"In South Bend, Ind., two down-on-their-luck characters, a divorced woman and an addled accident victim, team up to change their fates. Mr. Hemley cleverly uses the now-defunct Studebaker car company... to probe the apparent failure of the American dream." — Cathy A. Colman, The New York Times Book Review
"Hemley draws a quirky road map of the human heart, with all its foibles and dangers." — Publishers Weekly
"In variously troubled waters, the people in Robin Hemley’s short stories cling to their sense of humor." — People Magazine
"There is so much promise in this first book from a writer of clear ambition. Hemley is an urban writer of spark and vigour." — Times Literary Supplement
"The best stories in Robin Hemley's collection have a Holden Caulfield sense of how it is to be young and misunderstood in the world... Alarmingly adept." — Sunday Times
The Mouse Town, Winner of the Word Beat Press Fiction Award (for a chapbook), Judged by Joy Williams
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, is a Jewish American nonfiction and fiction writer, author of eight books, most recently, DO-OVER! In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments (Little, Brown, May, 2009). His other writing includes Turning Life Into Fiction (2006), Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists (anthology, with Michael Martone, 2004), Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday (2003), Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness (1998), The Big Ear, stories (1994), The Last Studebaker, a novel (1992), All You Can Eat, stories (1988), and The Mouse Town, stories (1987).
Biography
Robin Hemley was born to a literary family. His parents were both translators and editors of the work of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis SingerIsaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
, and his father, Cecil Hemley, was co-founder of The Noonday Press.
He graduated from Indiana University in Comparative Literature in 1980 and from the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
with an MFA in Fiction in 1982.
He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
as well as fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Ohioana Library Association, and the Washington State Arts Council.
He has had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
, the Fine Arts Work Center
Fine Arts Work Center
The Fine Arts Work Center is a non-profit enterprise devoted to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers through residency programs, to the propagation of aesthetic values and experience, and to the restoration of the year-round vitality of the historic art...
in Provincetown, Ragdale, and the Edward Albee Foundation.
His awards include two Pushcart Prizes for Fiction, first place in the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, and the Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction.
Since 2004, he has taught at the University of Iowa where he was hired as the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program, and since 2000 he has taught at Vermont College (now Vermont College of Fine Arts
Vermont College of Fine Arts
Vermont College of Fine Arts offers four distinct graduate programs, awarding Master of Fine Arts degrees in Visual Art, Writing, Writing for Children & Young Adults and Graphic Design. The student to faculty ratio at VCFA is 4-to-1.. The faculty and alumni of VCFA have won many literary awards,...
) where he served as Faculty Chair for three years. He has also taught at the University of Utah
University of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, Western Washington University
Western Washington University
Western Washington University is one of six state-funded, four-year universities of higher education in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located in Bellingham and offers bachelor's and master's degrees.-History:...
, St. Lawrence University
St. Lawrence University
St. Lawrence University is a four-year liberal arts college located in the village of Canton in Saint Lawrence County, New York, United States. It has roughly 2300 undergraduate and 100 graduate students, about equally split between male and female....
, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte , also known as UNC Charlotte or simply Charlotte, is a public research university located in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States...
.
At Western Washington University, he edited The Bellingham Review for five years and founded the Tobias Wolff
Tobias Wolff
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American author. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life , and his short stories. He has also written two novels.-Biography:Wolff was born in 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama...
Award for Fiction and the Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General...
Award for Nonfiction. At the University of Iowa, he founded the NonfictioNow Conference in 2005.
He lives in Iowa City, Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, State of Iowa. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total population of about 67,862, making it the sixth-largest city in the state. Iowa City is the county seat of Johnson County and home to the University of Iowa...
, is married, and has four daughters.
External links
DO-OVER! In Which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments
"Robin Hemley is on my very short list of writers I not only wish to read, not only need to read, but downright can't wait to read. Do-Over! is quintessential Hemley, full of wit and invention and brilliant language and warm humanity and when you least expect it-mid-bellylaugh, mid-bon mot-he will sneak up on you with a dazzlingly smart, deep-cutting insight into human nature. Do-Over! is an instant classic." — Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain"Robin Hemley has pulled out all the stops and managed to take that familiar wistful longing—the if-only sensation we have in regarding the past—and turned disappointment and chagrin into exhilarating time-travel. This series of reprises from childhood and youth has a charm that goes beyond a backward look, and becomes a touching mid-life memoir in which the heart of a child is soothed and liberated." — Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist's Daughter
"While it is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, what makes this book so absolutely endearing is the honesty and tender, humane insight of the author, and his reluctant, hard-won willingness to forgive his former self. A screwball premise winningly pulled off, Do-Over! should charm readers everywhere." — Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body
"Do-Over! is one of the funniest, wisest, most perfectly observed books I've ever read. Robin Hemley possesses a keen insight into the all-too-human wish to rectify our past mistakes. He also knows that we are better for having made them." — Bernard Cooper, author of The Bill From My Father
Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday
"Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution." — Harper's Magazine"Hemley, a thoughtful novelist and memoirist, painstakingly unravels a dense snarl of romantic notions, political agendas, scientific rivalries, thorny personalities, and rampant misperceptions to disclose a far stranger tale." — Booklist
"What's best about the book is Hemley's insistence on ambiguity; the truth, he notes, cannot be known because there is no one truth, but many different, overlapping strategies for interpreting the world.... By staking out a middle ground between Elizalde and the skeptics, Hemley enlarges Invented Eden, turning it into a book not just about one tribe but about the way we consider tribal culture as a whole." — David Ulin, Chicago Tribune
"Robin Hemley's book is a brave and wholly convincing attempt to find the truth concerning the 'anthropological fraud of the century'." — James Hamilton-Paterson, London Review of Books
Turning Life Into Fiction
"Turning Life into Fiction is simply the best guide to writing fiction I have read." — Altar Magazine"An enlightening and even inspiring guide to utilizing elements of one's own life and of one's family history as fodder for writing novels and short stories." — Booklist
"If you write fiction, listen up, look around, and take note. Why strain your brain making things up when you can transform real life into stories worth telling? Hemley recommends keeping a journal ('It's akin to an artist's sketchbook'), writing down your dreams (the unconscious is a great source of free material), and mining all those crazy stories your grandmother used to tell. Then combine bits and pieces from these sources, take one great mind leap (and many drafts) and—voila—you've got fiction." — Amazon.com
Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness
"Exceptional ... Hemley's book sits square in the center of the new and most successful nonfiction, exemplifying the trend of stretching the form. Nola is not just a life-and-death narrative of the author's brilliant and disturbed sister, but it's also a complex narrative of Hemley himself .... Couple the inventive format with a writing style that is deeply reflective, utterly honest, and sensitive of the issues of writing nonfiction in this way, and you have a colossal memoir. Hemley involves himself not just in telling a life story, but creating meaning by revealing how he thinks—exploring not one, but several voices that relate this narrative. In this, Hemley is a master .... This unconventional pattern of revelation will fascinate avid nonfiction readers, unless you're looking for mainstream confessional memoir, in which case, head for something lighter and less sophisticated than Nola." — Anne-Marie Oomen, ForeWord Magazine"Hemley, author of Turning Life into Fiction (1994), has not been able to write about his sister Nola until now, 25 years after her death. A young woman obsessed with the magical and the "hidden," she became overwhelmed by voices and visions. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, she soon succumbed to an inexplicable overdose of prescribed medication. It's easy to see why her story demands to be told, but everyone in Hemley's family is fascinating, and he ponders his complex legacy in a mesmerizing juggling act, combining the drama of fiction with the candor of memoir and the close scrutiny of criticism. His mother, Elaine Gottlieb Hemley, is a fiction writer, and his father, Cecil Hemley, was a poet, Isaac Singer's editor, and cofounder of Noonday Press. Nola wrote, too, and Hemley incorporates each of their voices into the tight weave of his intricate narrative, choosing wisely to abide by what could be the family motto—"Everything is open to interpretation and revision"—and allowing his readers to draw their own conclusions." — Donna Seaman, Booklist
"Hemley takes the memoir form further than mere recollection of familial events, and delves into the arena of imagination and what if. His mission to tell Nola's story is complicated by the fickleness of family members' memories, the mystic nature of much of Nola's work, and his own admission that he covets her strange and wonderful story himself. The result is a surprising and honest process of both writing and discovery--finding the "facts" and revealing the truths about the way we remember and what we try to forget. This is not a book to rush through, but one to savor and think about for a good long time." — Susan Swartwout, Amazon.com Review
The Big Ear (Stories)
"Clever, confident and, at times, even poignant...this collection abounds with intriguing situations skillfully rendered." — Publishers Weekly"This collection of 16 stories by Robin Hemley has something for everyone.... In these stories in Hemley's third collection, someone is always trying to make sense of something. And the answer is never easy." — The Chicago Tribune
"Hemley's characters are very real people, trying to make sense of themselves in a world often indifferent to them. If readability, to some, is a cardinal sin in writing, then Hemley is guilty. And may his sentence be to continue to write with such empathy, wit, intelligence, and compassion." — Matthew F. Benedict, South Bend Tribune
The Last Studebaker
"Hemley's weaving of these lost souls' stories into the Studebaker's failure to capture the American heart and pocketbook could collapse into a clever trick. Yet The Last Studebaker is never gimmicky, and offers hope beyond economic and personal despair. It's not only the Studebaker, but life itself, that evokes rueful glances and missed opportunities, along with tenderness and unpredictable charm." — Rachel Shteir, Washington Post Book World"In South Bend, Ind., two down-on-their-luck characters, a divorced woman and an addled accident victim, team up to change their fates. Mr. Hemley cleverly uses the now-defunct Studebaker car company... to probe the apparent failure of the American dream." — Cathy A. Colman, The New York Times Book Review
"Hemley draws a quirky road map of the human heart, with all its foibles and dangers." — Publishers Weekly
All You Can Eat
"Hemley's stories are filled with... powerful and surrealistic images, some of them frightening, some of them funny." — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times"In variously troubled waters, the people in Robin Hemley’s short stories cling to their sense of humor." — People Magazine
"There is so much promise in this first book from a writer of clear ambition. Hemley is an urban writer of spark and vigour." — Times Literary Supplement
"The best stories in Robin Hemley's collection have a Holden Caulfield sense of how it is to be young and misunderstood in the world... Alarmingly adept." — Sunday Times
Also by Robin Hemley
Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists (co-edited with Michael Martone)The Mouse Town, Winner of the Word Beat Press Fiction Award (for a chapbook), Judged by Joy Williams
Books
- DO-OVER! In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments (2009)
- Turning Life Into Fiction (2006)
- Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists (anthology, with Michael Martone, 2004)
- Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday (2003)
- Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness (1998)
- The Big Ear, stories (1994)
- The Last Studebaker, a novel (1992)
- All You Can Eat, stories (1988)
- The Mouse Town, stories (1987)
Essays
- "The Bells of Balangiga" in The Wall Street Journal
- "Dispatches From Manila" in McSweeney's Internet Tendency
- "A Jew's Christmas in The Philippines" in The Far Eastern Economic Review
- "Field Notes for The Graveyard Enthusiast" in New Letters
- "Aunt Blessy and Yamashita's Treasure" in Lost Magazine
- "A Reincarnation," and "Just When I Didn't Need One" in The New York Times, Modern Love
- "Reviews of The Partisan Review, 1949" in The Believer
- "Review of Short Stories Magazine 1895" in The Believer
- "Big Man on Camp" in New York Magazine
- "Prince Valiant" in Brevity
- "Reading History to My Mother from Fourth Genre" and "The Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction, 1970-Present"
- "Something Has to Be Understood: An Appreciation of Sherwood Anderson" for The Ohioana Library Association
- "The Question Robin Hemley Hates" in Creative NonfictionCreative Nonfiction (magazine)Creative Nonfiction is a literary magazine based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The journal was founded by Lee Gutkind in 1993 making it the first literary magazine to publish, exclusively and on a regular basis, high quality nonfiction prose...
Fall 2010, Issue 39
Short stories
- "All Good Things Are Surprises" in Narrative
- "My Father's Bawdy Song" in Ploughshares
Blogs
- Guest Post on Fake Memoirs for The National Book Critics Circle Blog
Interviews
- An Interview with Mitch Teich of Milwaukee Public Radio on Do-Over!
- An Interview with Steve Paulson on To the Best of Our Knowledge on Wisconsin Public Radio, on Invented Eden
Readings
- Robin Hemley Reads "Big Man On Camp" at Meacham Writers Conference, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga