At Cate Kennedy's launch of her first novel The World Beneath last year, she spoke about writing short stories and how she had never felt that they were lesser beasts than novels. The broader expectation, though, is that short stories are written as practise or are building blocks of something longer, or are a way of being noticed by publishers to get that novel, the writer's 'real' work, finally published.

But short stories are hard. The rules are different. Expectations are different. The narratives are fundamentally different. And short stories need work, just as much work as novels. I also think there is often more room for play in short stories, for chopping and changing, for emphasis and for making us, the reader, look hard at something we may never have seen before - often via juxtaposition or the extension of a metaphor that wouldn't work if it cropped up in a novel.

There aren't many writers these days who only write short stories but one who does is American writer, Amy Hempel. She even calls herself a 'short story' writer. Her short stories are robust, rigourous, funny, harsh, observant, quirky, and the confidence with which she writes ensures our gaze never wavers from what she wants us to look at. Often, that is the slightness and lightness of human interactions imbued with a dark melancholy and something that resembles awe or respect for all humankind. Quite a punch for a short story.

Hempel's latest collection of short stories, now available in paperback in Australia, is The Dog of the Marriage and is alternately laugh out loud funny, sad, heartbreaking and incredibly optimistic as she examines people in all types of relationships, including (obviously from the title) in marriages and with dogs. And her titles are where the action starts evoking responses: 'And Lead Us Not into Penn Station'; 'The Day I Had Everything'; 'At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom'; 'Tonight Is a Favor to Holly'; and 'When It's Human Instead of When It's Dog'.

Her language and rhythm, the cadence of her sentences, and her precise and sparse descriptions, all create worlds completely inhabited by her characters, and, ultimately, inevitably, inhabited by us as we read. She is inspiring because she is playful but confident. Nothing in this collection is an exercise or a truncated version of a longer work that she will get to later on. Her mastery of the form is breathtaking and luscious and well-worth the read.

And here you can listen to a lovely interview with Hempel by Ramona Koval from Radio National's The Book Show.