Robin Hemley


Robin Hemley, born in New York City, is an American nonfiction and fiction writer. He is the author of twelve books, and has had work published in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Conjunctions, The Sun, and Narrative, among others. Since 2004, he has served as the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Life and career

Robin Hemley was born to a Jewish family. His father, Cecil Hemley, was co-founder, with Arthur A. Cohen, of The Noonday Press, and his mother, Elaine Gottlieb Hemley, published fiction and poetry.
Hemley graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in Comparative Literature and from the University of Iowa with an MFA in Fiction.
His awards include two Pushcart Prizes for Fiction: first place in the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, and the Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction.
In 2004, he began teaching at the University of Iowa where he was hired as the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program, and since 2000 he has taught at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he served as Faculty Chair for three years.
At Western Washington University, he edited The Bellingham Review for five years and founded the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction and the Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction. At the University of Iowa, he founded the NonfictioNOW Conference in 2005.
In 2013, he was hired as the Director of the Writing Program, Writer-in-Residence, and Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.
He currently lives in Singapore, is married, and has four daughters.

Selected works

;Fiction
;Short stories
;Non-fiction