She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis[1] and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.
Her first memoir, A Romantic Education, dealt with her Czech heritage and won Hampl the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship in 1981.
[citation needed] Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life, another memoir, dealt with her Roman Catholic upbringing.
[5] Hampl won critical acclaim for her 2007 memoir The Florist's Daughter,[citation needed] about her mother's death.
The New York Times Book Review wrote, "Hampl's honest examination of her own life makes The Florist's Daughter a wonder of a memoir.