I’ll admit that I was so into sentence construction when I started working with Amy that I had zero interest in character development. Hempel subtly persuaded me, partially through introducing me to radical prose stylists who also care about their characters, that pathos in fiction is not an outmoded concept and is not the enemy of conceptual or transgressive literature.
As part of The Believer’s survey of contemporary writers, Trinie Dalton discusses how Amy Hempel taught her how to care about her characters.
