Announcements & News
GOAT HILL
GOAT HILL Goat Hill is the Providence meeting place of writers Hester Kaplan, Ann Hood, and Taylor Polites. We produce a wide range of literary events, offer writing workshops and one-on-one mentoring. Recent events have included: “Food Stars” with Ruth Reichl and Michael Ruhlman; “Thrillers” with Laura Lippman and Alison Gaylin; “The Art of the Memoir” with Dani Shapiro and Andre Dubus III; Agent Speed-Dating; and Workshop-Palooza! Goat Hill is committed to supporting writers and readers of all ages in Rhode Island’s vibrant literary life through innovative programming and community involvement. Goat Hill is proud to partner with School One on Write Rhode Island! a state-wide writing competition for students in grades 8 – 12. In 2016 – 2017, Write Rhode Island! partnered with libraries, schools, and community organizations to give free writing workshops to students across the state, and produced an anthology of the winning stories. Please visit our website for more information on Goat Hill and Write Rhode Island!: goathillwriters.com MORE... read more
Providence Noir
Find Hester’s story “Femur” in Providence Noir
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Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays
Find Hester’s essay “The Private Life of Skin” in Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays
read moreAward-Winning Writer
Recent awards include the Salamander Fiction Prize, the McGinnis Ritchie Award for Non-Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Learn MoreRecent Publications
Unravished
Masterfully written and emotionally packed, these stories seduce and startle, and remind us of the shifting ways we choose to narrate our own lives.
The Tell
Mira and Owen’s marriage is less stable than they know when Wilton Deere, an aging, no longer famous TV star, moves in to the grand house next door.
Kinship Theory
“Who better than a mother to do it? It’s just reversing the natural order a bit.” That’s how Dale explains to her mother that she wants her to bear the child Dale herself cannot have.
Acclaim for Hester Kaplan’s Recent Publications
Unravished
“These are stories for grownups, stories about those who find themselves ravaged–or maybe ravished is a better word– stories for those of us who feel ravished by time, by love, by loss, by the improvisatory nature of making-do. Hester Kaplan touches all the ache and anger we feel to life.”
William LychackThe Tell
“Hester Kaplan brings such fresh language and uncanny insight to whatever her keen eye lands upon, it’s as if she creates it anew. Everything, everyone, every inflection in The Tell is charged with precision, feeling, and consequence.”
Leah Hager CohenKinship Theory
“Kaplan’s story refuses to hew to formula….She writes about Maggie’s most intimate moments and her most mundane with an attention to detail that is overwhelming….The minutiae are more than matched by the drama that determines which mother ends up with custody of Lily, the baby. The surprising denouement is both rewarding and revelatory.”
Dana Kennedy
UNRAVISHED
a new collection of stories, from Ig Publishing:
Masterfully written and emotionally packed, the stories that make up Unravished, the new collection from award-winning author Hester Kaplan, seduce and startle, and remind us of the shifting ways we choose to narrate our own lives.
Praise for Unravished
Top Indie Fiction by Library Journal
“Kaplan delivers an exceptional collection with beautifully rendered stories for and about grown-ups. The second wife of a bombastic older man fends off neighbors distraught by his building plans, which could hurt the environment (and maybe the neighborhood?); a man plays father to his girlfriend’s son at the circus. For readers, not just short story fans, who like fiction focusing smartly on contemporary adult relationships.” ~ Library Journal
Interviews, Reviews, & Multimedia
THE PROVIDENCE PHOENIX: Hester Kaplan’s The Tell is captivating
In her first novel in 10 years, The Tell (Harper Perennial), Providence writer and educator Hester Kaplan tackles the familiar territory of marriage and relationships she has previously explored in the award-winning short story collection, The Edge of Marriage (1999), and her novel, Kinship Theory (2001).
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Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
Hester Kaplan is the author of the new short story collectionUnravished. She also has writtenanother story collection, The Edge of Marriage, and two novels, The Tell and Kinship Theory. She teaches at Lesley University, and she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Femamom: An Interview With Hester Kaplan, The Author Of “The Tell”
Hester Kaplan writes about marriage. Whether it’s stories about couples trying to figure out where they stand in a relationship with her award-winning The Edge of Marriage or most recently, with her new novel,The Tell, she writes about nuances that exist under the surface–the kind that make you question your own relationship after you’ve read her work.
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