Stephanie Hemphill

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Stephanie Hemphill 2007

Stephanie Hemphill is an American author of books for young adults. She has lived in Los Angeles and Chicago.[1]

Biography[edit]

Hemphill grew up in Chicago and began writing at an early age, as part of the Young Authors afterschool program.[2] Hemphill published poetry for adults first, but had always wanted to write for children.[2] Eventually, she took a class at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) about writing children's poetry and the class inspired her to write her first novel.[2]

Work[edit]

Hemphill's first novel, Things Left Unsaid: A Novel in Poems (2005), is realistic fiction about a friendship between two girls which alternates between toxic and healthy. The characterization of the main characters was considered excellent and the pacing of the story praised by School Library Journal.[3] The way that Hemphill writes Things Left Unsaid, according to Sara K. Day, allows the reader to become a confidante of the narrator, as if the reader is a friend, too.[4] Things Left Unsaid won the Myra Cohn Livingston Award in 2006.[2][5]

Hemphill won a 2008 Printz Honor for her book, Your Own, Sylvia, a novel in verse about the poet, Sylvia Plath.[6][7] In working on Your Own, Sylvia, Hemphill shared that this novel faced many challenges, one of which was surviving the "censoring gauntlet of the Plath estate," but that she enjoyed writing about her because she loved Plath as an artist.[8] Hemphill also felt a kinship to Plath during the time of her writing, since her marriage was ending and she was in the grips of being both overworked and depressed.[9] She also worked in a manner similar to Plath, writing poetry every day, journaling and also writing to her mother, as Plath often did.[10] The Chicago Tribune reviewed Your Own, Syliva, writing about the novel that "rarely is there such a striking and successful blend of literary form and subject."[11] Your Own, Sylvia also won the Myra Cohn Livingston Award in 2008.[5][12]

Hemphill's 2010 novel, Wicked Girls, is a free-verse historical novel of the Salem witch trials.[13] Wicked Girls was a 2010 L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist.[14] The Horn Book Magazine has singled out her novels in verse to highlight, calling the poetry in her 2012 work, Sisters of Glass, "elegant."[15] In 2013 she wrote, Hideous Love, which is also written in free-verse is about the writer Mary Shelley.[16] Hideous Love was considered by to be faithful to the history of Shelley's life, especially in imagining the difficulties of living under the principals of free love and "the compromises culture required of a woman of genius during the time period."[17]

While Hemphill's novels received much praise from various sources others have been more critical. Reviewers for The Lion and the Unicorn called the verse in Your Own, Sylvia "doggerel."[18]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "5Q Poet Interview Series: Stephanie Hemphill". Poetry for Children. April 11, 2012. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d Morris, Ellen Birkett (August 20, 2007). "Biographer Stephani Hemphill Digs Deep for Sylvia Plath's Emotional Truths". Authorlink. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  3. ^ Korbeck, Sharon (February 2005). "Things Left Unsaid: A Novel in Poems". School Library Journal. 51 (2): 136–137. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  4. ^ Day, Sara K. (2013). Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. pp. 35, 45–50. ISBN 9781621039600.
  5. ^ a b "Myra Cohn Livingston Award". Children's Literature Council of Southern California. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  6. ^ "Biography: Stephanie Hemphill". Teen Reads. The Book Report, Inc. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  7. ^ "2008 Michael L. Printz Award". Young Adult Library Services Association. The American Library Association. 2008. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  8. ^ "Your On, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath". Kirkus Reviews. 75 (23): 9. December 9, 2007. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  9. ^ Hemphill, Stephanie (2008). "Printz Award Honor Speech". Young Adult Library Services. 7 (1): 8–9. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  10. ^ "Stephanie Hemphill". Baker & Taylor Author Biographies. January 3, 2000. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  11. ^ Russell, Mary Harris (May 6, 2007). "For Young Readers". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  12. ^ Cocoran, Jill (October 18, 2008). "Celebrating Stephanie Hemphill & Poetry!". Jill Corcoran Books. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  13. ^ Smant, Lisa (September 7, 2010). "Books With Mix of Fact, Fiction May Have Young Readers Wanting MOre". Star-Telegram. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  14. ^ "Books, Authors and All Things Bookish". Los Angeles Times. February 22, 2011. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  15. ^ Hedeen, Katrina (March 2013). "Novels in Verse". Horn Book Magazine. 89 (2): 143–144. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  16. ^ Nolan, Abby McGanney (October 8, 2013). "Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote 'Frankenstein,' by Stephanie Hemphill". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  17. ^ Coats, Karen (November 2013). "Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein". Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. 67 (3): 156–157. doi:10.1353/bcc.2013.0836. S2CID 144285003.
  18. ^ Sorby, Angela; Thomas Jr., Joseph T. (September 2008). "The 2008 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry". The Lion and the Unicorn. 32 (3): 344–356. doi:10.1353/uni.0.0409. S2CID 145239965. Retrieved August 18, 2015.

External links[edit]

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