Ms. Hempel Chronicles
About this audiobook
Ms. Beatrice Hempel, a seventh-grade teacher, is new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her devoted father. Overwhelmed by her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words to the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex education class?
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum finds characters at their most vulnerable and then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. This is a journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up.
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About the author
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s first novel, Madeleine Is Sleeping, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2004. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Time, House, Georgia Review, and Best American Short Stories. She teaches writing at the University of California–San Diego and lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Stephen McLaughlin was born in Washington, DC, in 1951 and grew up there and on a farm in the Virginia Piedmont. He studied English and philosophy and worked in theater as an actor and director. He has also worked as a librarian, a musician, a landscaper, a cab driver and dispatcher, a handyman, an artist, and a waiter, among other things.
Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.
