get under your skin, break your heart, and unsettle your funny bone. “A blind date is coming to pick me up, and unless my hair grows an inch by seven o’clock, I am not going to answer the door,” announces the unnamed narrator of “Tonight Is A Favor to Holly.” Hempel’s writing laced the declarative rigor of conceptual art with the deadpan timing of standup comedy. Each spare story was nimbly composed from what Hempel has referred to as “crystallized instants”–a series of incisive moments, keen observations and remarks so sharp they sting. It’s obvious that we don’t need to know the names of these characters when we understand so clearly who they are: a father and his two children attempt to break the codes of sweepstakes contests, a veterinarian’s widow sleeps soundly in her husband’s empty bed, and a dying young woman busily wisecracks with her best friend. “Tell me things I won’t mind forgetting,” she said. “Make it useless stuff or skip it.”
 Born in Chicago in 1951, Hempel lives and works in New York. During the 1970s, she spent time in California where she enrolled in pre-med studies, got derailed by organic chemistry, pursued journalism, and maintained her life long love of dogs. Over the years, Hempel has variously worked as veterinarian’s assistant, volunteered with seeing eye dogs, and, with Jim Shepard, edited the poignant and hilarious anthology Unleashed: Poems By Writers’ Dogs. While studying fiction writing with Gordon Lish at Columbia University, she completed her first story as a classroom assignment: write down your worst secret, Lish instructed, something previously untold with the power to dismantle your sense of self. Hempel wrote "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried"—about two smart-alecky friends and the fierceness of grief: the story is included in her debut collection.
Within Hempel’s deftly layered fiction, there is a distinctly American rhythm: the hypnotic thrum of long-haul driving interrupted by sudden moments of lightning-flash recognition, the dislocation of human lives and the steadiness of canine devotion. Dedicated to creating short form fiction carefully distilled stories, the occasional novella Hempel produces sentences as deliberate and potent as tinctures. “Just once in my life—oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?” is her 2005 story “Memoir,” in its entirety. Hempel writes directly to the reader and her prose is startling, confident, and confiding.
 Since 1985, Hempel has published four collections of fiction. “I think the basic questions of fiction writing are: Why are you telling me this? Is this essential? Is this going to make anyone’s life better?” Hempel told a recent interviewer. In 2006, when The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel was released, readers welcomed this long overdue omnibus. Amy Hempel’s stories are undeniably essential and plainly unforgettable.