ANNOUNCEMENTS & NEWS
Commonweal – Review of Twice Born
Over the past few years, a surprising new genre has emerged: the critic’s daughter’s memoir. In 2022, there was Ada Calhoun’s Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me. The alluded-to-father there was the art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who died four months after...
On the Seawall – Twice Born Review
When Hester Kaplan was just about thirteen and her parents were away for the evening, she entered her father’s study, off limits to her even when he was there. Sitting at the desk where Justin Kaplan had composed his magnificent biography Mr. Clemens and Mark...
Hester Kaplan named 2022 Quarry Farm Fellow
Hester Kaplan named 2022 Quarry Farm Fellow by The Center for Mark Twain Studies for her new book in-progress, Twice Born: How Mark Twain Helped Me Find My Father
The Private Life of Skin
“The Private Life of Skin,” originally published in Southwest Review
This is Your Last Swim
Read Hester’s Story “This is Your Last Swim.”
National Endowment for the Arts
Hester Kaplan receives second National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
The Pain Form
Read Hester’s new story, “The Pain Form” in The Idaho Review”
Providence Noir
Find Hester’s story “Femur” in Providence Noir
Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays
Find Hester’s essay “The Private Life of Skin” in Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays
STAR TRIBUNE BOOK REVIEW: “The Tell,” by Hester Kaplan
An aging but charismatic actor moves in next door to a couple whose marriage is already in trouble.
Hester Kaplan’s novel “The Tell” occupies that peculiar literary middle earth where everything is about relationships enacted against a history that has shaped the characters to respond in significant ways to problems put in their paths.