Emily Fridlund

Emily Fridlund is an American author and academic. The Man Booker Prize shortlisted her debut novel, History of Wolves (2017). Fridlund was also a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and a winner of the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award.

Emily Fridlund grew up in Minnesota. She received an MFA in fiction at Washington University in Saint Louis and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California in 2014. Her graduate research was a study of simultaneity in the modernist and contemporary narrative.

Fridlund gained fame with her debut book, History of Wolves. Furthermore, notable recognition for the novel includes being selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, receiving the New York Times Editor’s Choice award, being named one of USA Today’s Notable Books, and receiving the Amazon Best Book of the Month award.

Additionally, the opening chapter was awarded the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction. In 2018, History of Wolves won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Emily received a $5,000 prize.

Fridlund’s debut collection of stories, Catapult (2017), won the Mary McCarthy Prize.

Her short fiction has appeared in Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, New Orleans Review, Southwest Review, and elsewhere.

Now Emily Fridlund is an assistant professor at Cornell University in the Department of Literatures in English. Her academic interests are creative writing and the craft of fiction.

Emily Fridlund currently lives in New York. She is married and has one child.

Photo credit: Cornell University