Christopher Kempf

Christopher Kempf is an American poet, essayist, and scholar of American literature.

Christopher Kempf
Born1985
Marion, Ohio, USA
EducationCornell University (MFA, 2009), Stanford University (Stegner Fellowship, 2014), University of Chicago (Ph.D., 2020)
Alma materJohn Carroll University (BA, 2007)
Occupation(s)Assistant Professor, University of Illinois
Notable workLate in the Empire of Men, What Though the Field Be Lost, Craft Class: The Writing Workshop in American Culture

Education

Kempf received his MFA in Poetry from Cornell University, his Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago,[1] and was a 2012–2014 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.[2] His honors include a Pushcart Prize,[3] a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship,[4] and a National Parks Arts Foundation residency.[5]

Career

Kempf is the author of the scholarly book Craft Class: The Writing Workshop in American Culture (Johns Hopkins, 2022)[6] and two poetry collections: Late in the Empire of Men (Four Way, 2017) [7] and What Though the Field Be Lost (LSU, 2021).[8] He has published creative nonfiction in Indiana Review,[9] Meridian,[10] and Narrative,[11] among other places. Additionally, his creative nonfiction has been long-listed in Best American Essays[12] and Best American Sports Writing.[13]

A former Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College,[14] Kempf teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois.[15]

Published books

Poetry
  • Late in the Empire of Men (Four Way, 2017)[16]
  • What Though the Field Be Lost] (LSU, 2021)[17]

Scholarship
  • Craft Class: The Writing Workshop in American Culture] (Johns Hopkins, 2022)[18]

Selected honors and awards
  • Illinois Arts Council 2023 Individual Artist Fellowship[19]
  • Narrative Summer 2020 Story/Essay Contest, First Place (for essay Local Color)[20]
  • The Best American Poetry (2020) (for poem "After,")[21]
  • National Parks Arts Foundation Residency (2018)
  • Pushcart Prize (2017)
  • National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2015)
  • Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, Stanford University (2012–2014)

Critical acclaim

Late in the Empire of Men

In The New York Times, Stephanie Burt celebrated how, in Late in the Empire of Men “long sentences and interwoven plots contrast the poet’s confined early life in blue-collar Ohio with the measure of freedom he found on the West Coast,” heralding the book’s critique of “American, and Midwestern, bad faith.”[22] In Kenyon Review, Brian Tierney found the collection “timely insight for our annus horribilis.” “[S]wagger, dark wit, erotic melancholy, syntactic dexterity, and many laudable skills are on display in Empire,” Tierney writes, “which successfully contribute to its tonal and thematic universe.”[23] In Colorado Review, Benjamin Voigt noted a “particular gift for vulnerability.” The poem “Clearing the History,” Voigt contended, “does the important cultural work of exploring how digital pornography impacts male sexuality, but beneath its referential pyrotechnics, it’s essentially a poem about shame and desire.”[24]

What Though the Field Be Lost

In Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Lisa Russ Spaar writes, of What Though the Field Be Lost, that “what Kempf does ...feels original and important.” In our “identity-facing moment,” Spaar argues, “Kempf steps with smarts, humor, a depth and breadth of historical knowledge, and a nimble imagination into the thick of the debate about the meaning of America, avoiding rancor, rage, or oversimplification.”[25] In Colorado Review, Katherine Indermaur likewise finds in the collection “precisely the kind of honesty missing from contemporary political discourse.”[26] Evan Goldstein, writing in The Adroit Journal, calls the book an “incisive look...at the social tensions and unanswered historical questions in America.”[27] And in The Civil War Monitor, Kent Gramm writes that “Kempf has written an excellent series of reflections,” describing poems that are “cerebral, dense with literary and historical allusions, and riddled with ambiguity and irony.”[28]

References
  1. "Alumni". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  2. "Former Stegner Fellows". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  3. Pushcart prize XLII, 2018 : best of the small presses. OCLC 973807904. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  4. "Writing Fellows: Christopher Kempf". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  5. "Meet the Artists". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  6. "Craft Class". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  7. "Late in the Empire of Men". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  8. "What Though the Field Be Lost".
  9. "Summer 2018 Volume 40, Number 1". 4 May 2018. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  10. "Contributors". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  11. "Local Color by Christopher Kempf". 16 September 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  12. "Best American Essays, 1986–Present". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  13. "BASW2019" (PDF). Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  14. "Spring_2017" (PDF). Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  15. "Christopher Kempf". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  16. Kempf, Christopher (2017). Late in the Empire of Men. ISBN 9781935536871.
  17. Kempf, Christopher (27 January 2021). What Though the Field Be Lost. ISBN 978-0807173633.
  18. Kempf, Christopher (15 March 2022). Craft Class. ISBN 978-1421443560.
  19. https://arts.illinois.gov/news/2023-fellowship-award-recipients
  20. "Local Color by Christopher Kempf". 16 September 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  21. Lehman, David (8 September 2020). The Best American Poetry 2020. ISBN 978-1982106607.
  22. Burt, Stephanie (3 November 2017). "Five Poets Explore the Intersection of Self and Other". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  23. "On Late in the Empire of Men by Christopher Kempf". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  24. "Late in the Empire of Men". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  25. "Second Acts". 12 October 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  26. "What Though the Field Be Lost". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  27. "E Pluribus Unum". 4 May 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  28. "What Though the Field Be Lost". Retrieved 10 July 2022.
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