About

I’m Lily Hamrick, a fiction writer, as well as a lawyer and a mom to three really great boys.  My first novel, The Secret War, a spy story set during the 1960s with a Don Draper-like hero, was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Award.  A story called “Corpus Delicti,” inspired by my second book, Queen of Mercy, was a finalist for the Dana Award for Short Fiction and the novel itself was a finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Since I spend a lot of time working as a lawyer, I’ve gotten a lot of writing done at writing residencies. I’ve been lucky enough to be awarded residencies at The Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Kimmel, Harding, Nelson Center for the Arts, Ragdale,  Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 

I’ve also written a couple of short stories, a form I really like a lot as a reader, although as a writer I haven’t written many.  One of them appeared in the fall/winter 2009 edition of Southern Humanities Review. It’s about a visit to a strip club.  If that kind of thing floats your boat, you can find it here on the blog.  SHR doesn’t have it online or I’d direct you there.  In addition, while I was working on placing a piece of short fiction, I chronicled the entire process, which is sometimes demoralizing and sometimes heartening.  You can find it here and here on the first blog I kept. I hope it gives other writers hope that if they persist, they will find a home for their work.  I hope it does not, as one not-very-nice person told me, signify how pathetic I am. 

If you want to be in touch with me, you can email me at lilyhamrick@gmail.com. I’d be happy to hear from you.