Amy Butcher

Amy Butcher is an essayist and the author of two books, including, most recently, Mothertrucker, a hybrid work of memoir and literary journalism that interrogates the realities of female fear, abusive relationships, and America’s quiet epidemic of intimate partner violence set against the geography of remote, northern Alaska. To date, the book has sold over 10,000 copies, received over 5,000 reviews, and has earned notable praise from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, CBS News, The Chicago Review of Books, The Oxford Review of Books, Booklist, and others, and early excerpts were awarded an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. “[Mothertrucker] is a rattling good story…shot through with poignant insights,” wrote The Wall Street Journal, and Kirkus Reviews called it “a searching and deeply empathetic memoir” and “a sobering reflection on verbal and psychological abuse [that] honors the healing power of female friendship and questions the nature of divinity beyond its constricting patriarchal manifestations.” Publisher’s Weekly called the book “tender and gripping,” writing, “[Mothertrucker] explores myriad issues with nuance and grace, including Indigenous rights, violence against women, religious hypocrisy, and environmental concerns.”

Her first book, Visiting Hours (Blue Rider Press/Penguin-Random House, 2015), earned starred reviews and praise from The New York Times Sunday Review of Books, NPR, The Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and others.

Excerpts of her new book were awarded a 2024 Individual Excellence Award by the Ohio Arts Council and named a longlist finalist in the 2025 Iowa Review Award for nonfiction.

Additional essays have been featured on National Public Radio and the BBC, anthologized in Best Travel Writing, awarded grand prize in the Iowa Review Award as judged by David Shields, and been awarded notable distinctions in the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021 editions of the Best American Essays series. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Review, The New York Times “Modern Love,” The Sun Magazine, The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, Fourth Genre, Lit Hub, Guernica, Gulf Coast, and Brevity, among others.

She earned her MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and is the recipient of Colgate University’s Olive B. O’Connor Creative Writing Fellowship in nonfiction as well as grants and awards from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Ohio Arts Council, Word Riot Inc., and the Stanley Foundation for International Research.