2008 Woodie Awards
Writing beyond self through the lens of memoir
Vanessa Veiock - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 10/31/07 Section: Arts
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Memoirs usually embrace the existence of the author. Patricia Hampl's don't.
"I'm using my experiences to write about the world," the author said. "They just happen to be in first person."
Hampl's newest book, The Florist's Daughter, paints a strikingly intimate narrative about reliving her Midwestern childhood as she says goodbye to her dying mother. While Hampl dives into the most inward moments of her life, the universal theses of the book -the verve of common people, life in the Midwest, supporting elderly and failing parents - radiate throughout the memoir.
Hampl, who earned an M.F.A. in poetry at the UI, will read today at Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., to begin her four-day stay in Iowa City as the keynote speaker for the UI's Bedell NonfictioNow Conference.
The search for meaning amid personal experience is Hampl's signature in her writing.
"I wouldn't bother my reader with a trip to the grocery store or a broken heart," the professor at the University of Minnesota said. "I try to illuminate the issues that aren't unique or special to me."
Carl Klaus, the director of the UI Nonfiction Writing Program during the late-80s and early '90s, said he felt so compelled by Hampl's ideas about the nature and significance of the memoir that he invited her to be a visiting professor at the UI.
"Hampl's memoirs are not just intensely vivid renderings of her personal experience and inner life," he said. "They also embody profound evocations of place and culture at significant historical moments."
Since the late-90s, Hampl and Klaus have co-edited Sightline Books: Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction from the UI Press.
David Hamilton, the editor of The Iowa Review and a longtime friend and colleague of Hampl, related her work to that of the French artist Henri Matisse and his female subjects. The art becomes an inverse self-portrait where the focus centers not on the individual but the way the artist sees.
"I'm using my experiences to write about the world," the author said. "They just happen to be in first person."
Hampl's newest book, The Florist's Daughter, paints a strikingly intimate narrative about reliving her Midwestern childhood as she says goodbye to her dying mother. While Hampl dives into the most inward moments of her life, the universal theses of the book -the verve of common people, life in the Midwest, supporting elderly and failing parents - radiate throughout the memoir.
Hampl, who earned an M.F.A. in poetry at the UI, will read today at Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., to begin her four-day stay in Iowa City as the keynote speaker for the UI's Bedell NonfictioNow Conference.
The search for meaning amid personal experience is Hampl's signature in her writing.
"I wouldn't bother my reader with a trip to the grocery store or a broken heart," the professor at the University of Minnesota said. "I try to illuminate the issues that aren't unique or special to me."
Carl Klaus, the director of the UI Nonfiction Writing Program during the late-80s and early '90s, said he felt so compelled by Hampl's ideas about the nature and significance of the memoir that he invited her to be a visiting professor at the UI.
"Hampl's memoirs are not just intensely vivid renderings of her personal experience and inner life," he said. "They also embody profound evocations of place and culture at significant historical moments."
Since the late-90s, Hampl and Klaus have co-edited Sightline Books: Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction from the UI Press.
David Hamilton, the editor of The Iowa Review and a longtime friend and colleague of Hampl, related her work to that of the French artist Henri Matisse and his female subjects. The art becomes an inverse self-portrait where the focus centers not on the individual but the way the artist sees.
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