CHRISTINE HEMP
Poet and essayist Christine Hemp has created unique curricula within academic and corporate organizations alike. From Harvard University students to Microsoft executives, from U.S. Navy officers to visual artists, her participants report over and over that they become “unstuck,” that their command of language is taken to a new level. A University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival participant said this about her creative nonfiction seminar: “Attending Christine’s workshop was like taking a ride in the Florida Everglades on a hovercraft – moss flying past, alligators surfacing and then receding, sounds from unseen birds – a world I’d be afraid to visit with anyone but Christine – a truly savvy guide.”
Hemp received the Conway Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing at Harvard University Extension. She has also taught poetry and nonfiction at University of New Mexico, the University of Washington Extension, and currently the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Hemp has aired her poems and essays on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. She currently writes, produces, and hosts a public radio program entitled The Hempsonian Institute of Higher Yearning, which weaves poetry, music, science, and art into an hour-long exploration of the senses. It has recently won approval for a the international web grant platform Kickstarter. Her poetry chapbook “That Fall” was selected for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press and was published in May. Her essay about sending a poem of hers into space on a NASA mission won her the Northwest Society of Professional Journalism Award. Hemp’s work has appeared in such publications as the Iowa Review, Harvard Magazine, Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, Christian Science Monitor, Maine Times, the Drunken Boat, and in anthologies by Macmillan, Yale University Press, and Simon & Schuster. She was a staff art critic for six years at THE Magazine, Santa Fe's magazine for the arts, and her art writing has also appeared in American Craft, Art & Auction, Art Access, and Ampersand.
Her awards include a Harvard University Conway Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing, a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship for Literature for her memoir-in-progress, two Barbara Deming/Money for Women grants, the Donald Murray Award at U.C. Davis, a fellowship for a residency at Vermont Studio Center, First Runner-Up in the Iowa Award for Literary Non-Fiction and the Paula Jones Gardiner Award for Poetry at Floating Bridge Press.
Connecting Chord, Hemp’s program with police officers and youth-at-risk, began in 2000 when she spent a week in England with Metropolitan Police officers and youth offenders in the highest crime-rate borough of London – using poetry as a tool for crime prevention. Hemp received a plaque from the English Poetry Society; the Brixton Chief of Police called her program a “milestone event.”
Hemp earned her B.A. in Humanities from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon; she holds a Masters degree in English from Middlebury College in Vermont with study at Lincoln College, Oxford, England. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.
Hemp received the Conway Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing at Harvard University Extension. She has also taught poetry and nonfiction at University of New Mexico, the University of Washington Extension, and currently the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Hemp has aired her poems and essays on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. She currently writes, produces, and hosts a public radio program entitled The Hempsonian Institute of Higher Yearning, which weaves poetry, music, science, and art into an hour-long exploration of the senses. It has recently won approval for a the international web grant platform Kickstarter. Her poetry chapbook “That Fall” was selected for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press and was published in May. Her essay about sending a poem of hers into space on a NASA mission won her the Northwest Society of Professional Journalism Award. Hemp’s work has appeared in such publications as the Iowa Review, Harvard Magazine, Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, Christian Science Monitor, Maine Times, the Drunken Boat, and in anthologies by Macmillan, Yale University Press, and Simon & Schuster. She was a staff art critic for six years at THE Magazine, Santa Fe's magazine for the arts, and her art writing has also appeared in American Craft, Art & Auction, Art Access, and Ampersand.
Her awards include a Harvard University Conway Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing, a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship for Literature for her memoir-in-progress, two Barbara Deming/Money for Women grants, the Donald Murray Award at U.C. Davis, a fellowship for a residency at Vermont Studio Center, First Runner-Up in the Iowa Award for Literary Non-Fiction and the Paula Jones Gardiner Award for Poetry at Floating Bridge Press.
Connecting Chord, Hemp’s program with police officers and youth-at-risk, began in 2000 when she spent a week in England with Metropolitan Police officers and youth offenders in the highest crime-rate borough of London – using poetry as a tool for crime prevention. Hemp received a plaque from the English Poetry Society; the Brixton Chief of Police called her program a “milestone event.”
Hemp earned her B.A. in Humanities from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon; she holds a Masters degree in English from Middlebury College in Vermont with study at Lincoln College, Oxford, England. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.