Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Paris Review

    Nothing Is Like Anything Else: On Amy Hempel

    by Alice Blackhurst Mar 27, 2019 4 minutes

    This week marks the release of Amy Hempel’s Sing to It, her first book in over a decade.

    In the first story I submitted to a writing workshop, I included, in my naive twenty-something state, a scene in which a male and female character get close following a party. The manuscript was a mess of overly florid metaphors, and it included the following sentence: “He touched her arm lightly.” The class’s teacher, the short-fiction writer Amy Hempel, gave it back to me swimming in black ink and annotations. “Touching isn’t cheap,” she offered gently, in response to my clunky familiarities. On the question of the metaphors she was bolder:

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Paris Review

    The Paris Review1 min read
    Aēsop® and THE PARIS REVIEW
    The story of Aesop’s partnership with The Paris Review is one plotted by a deep reverence for the written word. Since 2015, we have been proud to offer this esteemed quarterly for purchase in select stores across the globe and at aesop.com, inviting
    The Paris Review2 min read
    Paper Bags
    G. Peter Jemison was born in 1945 to an ironworker father and a stay-at-home mother, both of the Seneca Nation of Indians. He grew up in Irving, New York, on the border of the Cattaraugus Reservation, where he often visited his cousins and grandmothe
    The Paris Review1 min read
    Credits
    Cover: © Jeremy Frey, courtesy of the artist, Karma, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Page 12, © Jeremy Frey, courtesy of the artist, Karma, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; pages 34, 43, 48, 50, courtesy of Mary Robison; page 53, photograph by

    Related