Interviews
Wild Roof Podcast #36: Amy Dupcak of Cagibi with Aaron Lelito
In the February episode, Amy Dupcak joins host Aaron Lelito to talk about her role as Editor-in-Chief of Cagibi. We chat about Amy's writing background, from the moody poetry of adolescence to the publication of her short story collection dust, as well as some practical advice for submitting your work. Along the way, we discover our mutual appreciation for the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, including the book-nerd intricacies of Pale Fire.
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #65: Amy Dupcak by Jordana Frankel
She knows how to smile well, and she does it more than most New Yorkers. She doesn’t wear her hurt on her sleeve, either. If you’d only just met her, with her diminutive stature—eminently huggable—and her unguarded, almost impish smile, the dark tenor of many stories in her debut collection Dust might take you by surprise.
Reading them, I found myself transported to the soft, inconsolable grief of youth. I shook hands with the devils who broke my heart and the semi-tortured creatives I’d once longed to grow into. Amy had rolled those characters over in their dusty graves so that I might ogle their confused inner darkness. Knowing her personally, I wasn’t surprised so much as I was intrigued. Reminded of the great distance between one’s interior landscape and one’s exterior, the person versus the persona, I interviewed her in hopes of bridging this gap…
This Short Story Collection Explores The Dreamy Space of Adolescence in Bust by Meghan Sara
Author Amy Dupcak recalls being an introspective child, fascinated by her own imagination. It is no coincidence that her debut collection of short stories, Dust, tumbles headlong into the dreamy space of adolescence like a whirlpool of recovered memories. Read on for a sample from Dust and to learn more about Amy’s thoughts on “strong female characters,” on older men dominating the youths of girls, and why her teachers teased her for putting her feet on her desk…
National Short Story Month Mini-Interview with Amy Dupcak for Emerging Writers Network by Dan Wickett
EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as an author? Primary form to work with, or something you write when an idea hits, or …?
Amy: Although I’ve finished one novel and am currently working on a second, I’ve always been drawn to the short story form. I prefer writing subtle moments of impact to high-stakes drama, and since an epiphany is often at the heart of a short story, I can focus on a character’s personal realization or observation rather than a show-stopping climax. Also, short stories are less of a time commitment for a reader, which grants me the freedom to experiment from story to story. I come up with new ideas for stories quite frequently, so even though I took a break from writing them after publishing Dust, I’m excited to write more stories in the future and hopefully publish another collection.
The English Kills Review Interview with Amy Dupcak by Scott Alexander Hess
Amy Dupcak is a lot like her prose. On the surface: bright, elegant and meticulous. What lies beneath however, in both the woman and her work, is a relentless commitment to illuminating life’s quirky, raw underside.
In her searing debut short story collection, Dust, Dupcak unflinchingly gets under the skin of a tribe of fascinating young characters that offer insights beyond their years. Anchored with lush tangles of prose, Dupcak’s stories not only touch but often scorch the heart…
Jackson & Dupcak: A Look at Two Writers in Huffington Post by Scott Alexander Hess
While Jackson explores certain fringe elements and the impact of isolation, Dupcak gets deep under the skin of a tribe of young people who at first seem lost, but ultimately reveal the resilience of the human spirit. I caught up with Dupcak, discussing her new story collection, her thoughts about Jackson’s work and her top five short story list…
Dear Little Sisters Podcast: Chat with Amy Dupcak with Bernice & Leena
Amy Dupcak chats with two high-school students about writing, teaching, mentoring, and educating.
Book reviews & blurbs
The Collagist / The Rupture: Issue Eighty-Eight, December 2016 by Christopher X. Shade
Dupcak teaches writing to kids and teens, in workshop format, and this access she has to the pangs, turbulence, and drama of adolescence has undeniably fed her talent for creating stories. These stories of youth are richly textured. The protagonists vary in gender, age and circumstance, and are believable, sometimes agonizingly so, because many of these adolescent themes are universal; we remember tender spots of our younger selves.
In the story "In Limbo," a very young girl—a reserved grade-school child, in a Catholic all-girls school, who is teased by other girls and does not yet know what the word "slut" means—is kidnapped by an artist who performs his "art" on her in some very tense scenes. The pacing is perfect, unhurried. The scenes are tense because we fear for this girl's safety, and for her innocence. The story line of this kidnapping is captivating, but what this story powerfully draws out is her home life, her alienation: she is hardly seen by her mother and father, and everyone in her world. She hardly exists…
Amy Dupcak’s prose is precise and taut, yes, but it teeters at the edge of some precipice, some crucial border between control and disaster. The characters in Dust are complicated: passionate, scornful, smart, fickle, loving, manipulative, impulsive, and wry. Sometimes they enact the worst kinds of betrayals; at other times they approach redemption. Reading these stories is like looking in the mirror. — Nelly Reifler, author of See Through and Elect H. Mouse State Judge
The characters in Amy Dupcak's beautiful, smart collection Dust often find themselves both connected to and estranged from one another and themselves. A dynamic personal tension fuels each of these finely-taut stories, which are, like many of the characters in them, sometimes sweet on the surface, yet fraught with an underlying emotional weight. A jaded man begins to feel comfort from reading the diary of a woman he's never met. A girl who feels paralyzed by her own beauty struggles to name the unnameable and become invisible through her stories. A young boy works on writing his own dictionary to better express himself, yet can't find the words to identify his own grief and sadness. These are characters striving to understand themselves and their world through language, but who are often unable to find the perfect words. Lucky for us, Dupcak does. — David Olimpio, author of This is Not a Confession
Readings
Lyrics, Lit & Liquor
Les Bleus
Franklin Park
Apartment Party
Secret Loft
Guerilla Lit
Artery
Mellow Pages
PEN America’s Lit Crawl
