Patricia Hampl
“It's Not Just Me: The Rise of Memoir in Our Time”

Patricia Hampl first won recognition for her memoir A Romantic Education, which has been in print since 1981. Her most recent books are Blue Arabesque and The Florist’s Daughter—both on the New York Times 100 Notable Books list.

Her collection of essays on memoir, I Could Tell You Stories, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2000. She is Regents Professor of English at the University of Minnesota and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Life Narratives, Kingston University-London. She is also a member of the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program.

In 1990, Hampl was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Bush Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (twice, in poetry and prose), among others.

Patricia is the author as well of two collections of poetry, Woman Before an Aquarium and Resort and Other Poems. She is also the author of Spillville, a meditation on Antonin Dvorak’s 1893 summer in Iowa, with engravings by Steven Sorman. Virgin Time, about her Catholic upbringing and an inquiry into contemplative life, is available in a recent paperback.

Ms. Hampl’s fiction, poems, reviews, essays and travel pieces have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.

About her keynote talk, Patricia says “Sinclair Lewis never wrote a memoir—but it seems as if everybody else has. Memoir, in fact, has become the signature literary genre of our age.”