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Books Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder | ||
Amy Butcher is an American writer and essayist. Her memoir, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, was published in 2015 and received starred reviews and praise from The New York Times Sunday Review of Books, NPR, The Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Glamour, among others.
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Early life and education
Butcher received her BA from Gettysburg College and her MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program.
Career
Butcher has had a number of essays published in the New York Times “Modern Love,” The New York Times Opinion Section, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, The Kenyon Review, The Colorado Review, The Rumpus, Brevity, Salon, and Guernica, among others. Her essays have been awarded the 2016 Solas Award for “Best Travel Writing of the Year,” the 2014 Iowa Review Award in nonfiction, and a notable distinction in Best American Essays 2015 and Best American Essays 2016. She has also been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has held teaching fellowships or visiting writer positions at the University of Iowa, Colgate University, Mount Mercy University, Elgin Community College, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the Iowa Youth Summer Writing Program, and the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in Sitka, Alaska.
Her March 2016 opinion piece, "Emoji Feminism", published in the Times Sunday Review, was cited by Google as the inspiration for thirteen new female emojis, accepted in July 2016 by the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and released in December 2016. Butcher was subsequently interviewed on BBC Radio and BFM 89.9 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Butcher's debut memoir, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, 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. The book was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday with Rachel Martin, WAMC's The Roundtable, and Poets & Writers Magazine. The New York Times Sunday Review of Books writes 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." (The New York Times Sunday Review of Books, July 15, 2015) NPR's Rachel Martin describes the book as "a haunting meditation on human fragility." (NPR, March 30, 2015). The Star Tribune writes that the book is "riveting and visceral..." and that "Butcher is unflinching in her self-examination and masterful at it." (The Star Tribune, May 4, 2015) Kirkus Reviews describes the book as "gripping and poignant" (Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2015), Biographile writes that it is "enthralling, thought provoking, and deeply empathetic," (Biographile, April 9, 2015), and Glamour writes that it is "emotional, powerful, and oddly enough, beautiful." (Glamour, April 6, 2015).
She is currently a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses on the essay.