Tom Hopkins

(he/him/his)

  • Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing

Areas of Study

Education

  • MFA, creative writing, fiction; New York University; 2005
  • AB, cum laude, English, Harvard University, 1993

Biography

My short fiction has been published in the Massachusetts Review, Fence, Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, One Story, and about two dozen other publications. I have also written for Bookforum, Tablet, and Poets & Writers, as well as a number of alumni magazines and other university publications.

I’ve taught writing to high school students at Sarah Lawrence College, graduate students at Columbia University’s creative writing program, working adults at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and undergraduates at New York University, Smith College, and Yale University.

Among other honors, I’ve been a finalist for the Calvino Prize, the Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction, and Southeast Review’s World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. I was runner-up in the 2012 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and I’ve held residencies at the Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation.

As a musician and actor, I’ve busked in the French Quarter, opened for Patti Smith and Sleepy LaBeef. I have performed in basements, coffeeshops, abandoned warehouses, and bars from Northampton to Oregon, San Francisco to Chapel Hill, and one legitimate theater in Moscow.

As a writer and editor, I’m interested in chapbooks and small presses, formal experimentation, and hoaxes and false documents. My limited-edition, self-published book the Year of Living Autobiographically was an Oulipean experiment in social media, self-publishing, and the gift economy.

  • 2015: “This Is a Test of the System,” The Massachusetts Review v. 56 #1
  • 2014: “The Mohel Mulligan,” the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal
  • 2013: “The Way the Water All Agrees on a River” and “An Obstacle to Empathy,” BOMB Magazine #124
  • 2012: “Our Libretto Conundrum,” “The Songs Our Local Birds Always Sing,” and “Catching the Rollers,” the Cincinnati Review #8.2
  • 2011: “What I Remember of My Love Affair with the Bird,” Fence #8.2
  • 2010: “Elephants of the Platte,” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #25
  • 2009: “The Man in the Moon Is a Lawyer,” Indiana Review #31.2

Fall 2024

False Documents: Fiction, Fakery, and Other Falsehoods — CRWR 273

Lyric Essay — CRWR 341

Practicum — CRWR 485

Spring 2025

The Art of the Monologue: One-Person Plays and Other Solo (Non)Fictions — CRWR 218

Lyric Essay — CRWR 341

Practicum — CRWR 485

Creative Writing Capstone Seminar — CRWR 490

Notes

Tom Hopkins publishes chapbook of stories

November 20, 2020

What I Remember of My Love Affair with the Bird and Other Stories, a chapbook collection of short fiction by Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Tom Hopkins, was published on November 20 by The Cupboard Pamphlet, a small press based in Denver and Cleveland. Three of the five writers who wrote advance praise for the book are Oberlin alumni: Gary Shteyngart ’95, Matthew Sharpe ’85, and Abbey Mei Otis ’11.