Amy Butcher, Reading and Conversation with Hannah Stephenson

1124 Parsons Ave.,Columbus OH 43206

08 September, 2022

Description

Amy Butcher is the author of Mothertrucker, a book that interrogates the realities of female fear, abusive relationships, and America’s quiet epidemic of intimate partner violence set against the geography of remote, northern Alaska. The book earned critical praise from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, CBS News, The Chicago Review of Books, The Oxford Review of Books, Booklist, and others. The Wall Street Journal writes that Mothertrucker is "a rattling good story" that is "shot through with poignant insights." Publisher’s Weekly writes that the book is "tender and gripping," writing, “[Mothertrucker] explores myriad issues with nuance and grace, including Indigenous rights, violence against women, religious hypocrisy, and environmental concerns.” Kirkus Reviews calls the book "a searching and deeply empathetic memoir," writing, "[Mothertrucker] is a sobering reflection on verbal and psychological abuse [that] honors the healing power of female friendship and questions the nature of divinity beyond its constricting patriarchal manifestations.” Excerpts of Mothertrucker also won an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, with judges calling the book "well researched," "very well-written," and "a positive antidote to the trauma of violence against women.” Her essays have appeared in Granta, Harper's, The New York Times "Modern Love," The New York Times Sunday Review, The Washington Post, and Brevity, among others. She is the Director of Creative Writing and an Associate Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University and teaches annually at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in Sitka, Alaska. Hannah Stephenson is a poet, writer, editor, and instructor living in Columbus, Ohio She is the author of Cadence (Wick Poetry Center--Kent State University Press, In the Kettle, the Shriek (Gold Wake Press), series Co-Editor for New Poetry of the Midwest (New American Press, editor of The Ides of March: An Anthology of Ohio Poets (Columbus Creative Cooperative). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, 32 Poems, Vela, The Journal, and Poetry Daily.