Amy Butcher

Amy Butcher is an American writer and essayist. Her memoir, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, was published in 2015. Her second book, Mothertrucker, is forthcoming from Amazon Publishing literary press Little A Books in 2022[1]. In August 2019, Makeready Films announced a film adaptation of Mothertrucker will be produced and directed by Jill Soloway and will star Julianne Moore.[2]. In February 2020, the Ohio State Arts Council awarded excerpts of Mothertrucker an Individual Excellence Award,[3] calling the project "well researched," "very well-written," and "a positive antidote to the trauma of violence against women."[4]

Amy Butcher reading at Powell's Books

Early life and education

Butcher grew up outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[5] She received her BA from Gettysburg College[6] and her MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program.[7]

Career

Butcher's debut memoir, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder,[8] was published in April 2015 by Penguin-Random House imprint Blue Rider Press. It recounts her struggle to reconcile her friendship with her college friend Kevin Schaeffer, who violently murdered his girlfriend after a psychotic break.[9][10] The book was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday with Rachel Martin,[11] WAMC's The Roundtable,[12] and Poets & Writers Magazine.[13] The New York Times Sunday Review of Books said that "at the heart of this story, beyond Butcher's search to understand the incomprehensible, lies our societal failure to recognize serious depression as the potentially fatal illness that it is..." and that "her research offers a tragic portrait of the turn of events that left one young woman dead and another forever changed."[14] However, The Los Angeles Review of Books says that the structuring and manipulation of sensitive yet pertinent information throughout "feels insensitive, not to say irresponsible, to manipulate the reader thus...Leaving out what she knows in order to build suspense prevents her from investigating themes that might have layered this work with meaning and texture...by the time a sense of self-awareness swells, in the epilogue, the reader isn’t sure the narrator can be trusted. That being so, she has failed herself and her reader as well."[15]

Her second book, Mothertrucker, is forthcoming from Amazon Publishing literary press Little A Books in 2022.[16] In August 2019, it was announced Makeready Films will be producing a film adaptation directed by Jill Soloway and starring Julianne Moore.[17] Of the project, Jill Soloway has said, “I’m honored to tell this deeply resonant story about two women finding meaning and strength as they face an epic challenge in one of the most punishing and beautiful landscapes on the planet." In February 2020, the Ohio Arts Council awarded excerpts of Mothertrucker an Individual Excellence Award[18], calling the project "well researched," "very well-written," and "a positive antidote to the trauma of violence against women."[19]

Butcher's March 2016 opinion piece, "Emoji Feminism",[20] published in The Times Sunday Review,[21] was cited by Google as the inspiration for thirteen new professional female-empowered emojis,[22][23][24] accepted in July 2016 by the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and released in December 2016.[25] In August 2017, these emojis were nominated as Design of the Year by the Design Museum in London,[26] where they are on display alongside a hijab designed by Nike, Wolfgang Tillmans’ Remain Campaign for the Brexit referendum and items from Kanye West's clothing line, among other artifacts.[27]

Butcher's essays have been published in Granta,[28] The New York Times,[29] The Washington Post,[30] Harper's Magazine,[31] The Paris Review,[32] Literary Hub,[33] The Kenyon Review,[34] The Iowa Review,[35] The American Scholar,[36] Salon[37] and Guernica.[38] Her May 2018 essay, "Women These Days," was listed as a "Best of 2018" essay by Entropy Magazine[39] and nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in the Best American Essays[40] series by the editors at Brevity Magazine. Her February 2018 Lit Hub essay "MIA: The Liberal Men We Love" was featured in Rebecca Traister's book[41] Good And Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger.[42] Her December 2018 essay, "Flight Path," was awarded grand prize in Sonora Reviews 2018 flash prose contest[43] as judged by Nicole Walker. Of the essay, Walker writes, "Referencing cultural touchstones as diverse W.H. Auden and Jeopardy, this piece stacks everything we thought we knew about Icarus and Daedalus and then piles more on. The images of the would-be immigrants tucked into the wheelhouses of airplanes makes those thick stories immediate. Too immediate and hard to hear, but necessary. The final stark image of not wax but metal becomes a hot, stark mirror."[44]

Additional essays have been anthologized in The Best Travel Writing 2016,[45] The Soul Of A Great Traveler,[46] Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays,[47] Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction[48] and The Best Of Vela.[49]

Butcher has held teaching fellowships or visiting writer positions at the University of Iowa,[50] Colgate University,[51] Johns Hopkins University,[52] The Ohio State University,[53] Wells College,[54] Mount Mercy University,[55] the Endless Arts in Eagles Mere Festival,[56] the 2017 Fall For The Book Festival,[57] the Conversations and Connections Conference,[58] the Iowa Summer Writing Festival[59] and the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in Sitka, Alaska.[60] She has also given readings at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. and Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon.

Butcher has received grants and awards from Colgate University[61], the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts,[62] and the Ohio State Arts Council.[63]

Butcher is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University,[64] where she teaches creative writing. She spends her summers teaching writing at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival[65] in Iowa City, Iowa and the Sitka Fine Arts Camp[66] in Sitka, Alaska.

Awards and honors
  • 2020 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio State Arts Council[67]
  • 2018 The Sonora Review Flash Prose Contest judged by Nicole Walker[68]
  • 2014 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction[69]
  • 2015 Best American Essays Notable Essay[70]
  • 2016 Solas Award for best travel writing[71]
  • 2016 Best American Essays Notable Essay[72]
  • 2017 Best American Essays Notable Essay[73]
  • 2018 Best American Essays Notable Essay[74]
  • Nomination for Best American Essays 2019 by the editors of Brevity Magazine[75]
  • 2018 Pushcart Prize Nomination by the editors of Brevity Magazine[76]
  • 2018 Best Essays of 2018 by Entropy Magazine[77]
  • 2018 Sonora Review's Flash Prose Award[78]
gollark: Does this work well in practice?
gollark: Can it predict cat frequency just from a URL?
gollark: Interesting.
gollark: D exists, don't know of an A.
gollark: How's that work?

References
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  5. G'Schwind, Stephanie (2017-05-15). Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 9781885635587.
  6. "Amy E. Butcher". Ohio Wesleyan University.
  7. "Amy Butcher". Ohio Wesleyan University. Retrieved 2018-12-09.
  8. Butcher, Amy (2015). Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 9780698176904.
  9. Blunt, Judy (July 15, 2015). "Memoirs". The New York Times. Retrieved October 14, 2016.
  10. Otte, Jeff (July 20, 2015). "Amy Butcher on Suicide, Psychosis and Her Memoir, Visiting Hours". Westword. Retrieved October 14, 2016.
  11. "Making Sense Of Murder In 'Visiting Hours'". NPR.org. Retrieved 2016-12-14.
  12. Donahue, Joe. "Amy Butcher's Memoir Of Friendship And Murder". Retrieved 2016-12-14.
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  21. Butcher, Amy (March 11, 2016). "Emoji Feminism". Sunday Review. The New York Times. Retrieved October 14, 2016.
  22. "Google designs emojis depicting professional women". BBC News. May 11, 2016. Retrieved October 13, 2016.
  23. Readhead, Harry (May 13, 2016). "Google wants feminist emojis which depict women working (not dancing or getting married)". Metro. Retrieved October 14, 2016.
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  29. Butcher, Amy (2014-11-06). "On the Road to 'the One,' Sometimes, a Rest Stop". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-12-14.
  30. Butcher, Amy (2017-01-11). "What I learned from visiting the grave of my mom's teenage boyfriend". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2017-01-15.
  31. Butcher, Amy (2017-03-08). "Bare Necessities". The Stream - Harper's Magazine Blog. Retrieved 2017-11-09.
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  34. Butcher, Amy (2014-02-26). "In Conversation With Our Contemporaries". Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. 16 (1): 139–142. ISSN 1544-1733.
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  47. G'Schwind, Stephanie, ed. (2017-05-15). Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays (1 ed.). Fort Collins, Colorado: Center for Literary Publishing. ISBN 9781885635570.
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