I think I mentioned Chuck Palahnuik and I have become extremely close? As in, I read his Consider This twice and took notes? You remember, on New Year’s Eve, 2020? Anyhow, Chuck mentions this Amy Hempel character more than a few times, in glowing terms. So, if l ❤️ Chuck and Chuck ❤️ Amy, then … Continue reading We need to talk about Amy Hempel
Came across a reference to Peter Christopher in Consider This by Palahnuik. Christopher taught Palahnuik to write in first person but ‘submerge the I.’ Sounds like great life advice, never mind writing.
Somehow Christopher’s slipped away, out of print. This link/reblog contains a Christopher short story called Flight. I would love to read more.
This book is probably the best example of these unfairly forgotten books and of a great writer few knew and who is no longer with us to share his words and sentences.
Peter Christopher was a Lish student from the Columbia U days (along with Amy Hempel, Christopher Coe and Anderson Ferrell), whose collection,Campfires of the Dead (1989) is as fine a first volume of short stories as any of the best being released today via the Flannery O’Connor Award, the AWP Awards, Drue Heinz, Juniper, Dzanc, or the Iowa Short Fiction Award. The fifteen stories were developed in Lish’s class and published in either The Quarterly or a special issue of StoryQuarterly that Lish edited. We remember well, in 1989, finding this book in a Los Angeles store and getting giddy when reading it. Where did this whacky gfeat fun stuff come from? They are quirky stories about…
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Just waving 