Amy Hempel is one of the most prominent of the new American “minimalist” writers. Hempel has produced many collections of short stories including At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990) and Tumble Home (1997). She writes articles, essays, and short stories for such publications as Vanity Fair, Interview, GQ, ELLE, Harper’s Magazine, and The Quarterly. She won the Ambassador Book Award in 2007 for The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006), which was also named as one of The New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the year. She won the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2008, and she received the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction in 2009.