Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, March 2, 2019, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Introducing Emily Fridlund

History of Wolves is a first novel for Emily Fridman, and as a hitherto relative unknown, she doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet. She is around 40 years old and has worked mostly as an English professor and short-story writer. Her first collection of short stories, Catapult, was published the same year as History of Wolves and was nominated for the Mary McCarthy Prize. The first chapter of History of Wolves was initially published as a short story, which Fridlund then decided to expand into the novel, which was a finalist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. It won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. History of Wolves was also a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, one of USA Today’s Notable Books, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and a #1 Indie Next pick. (The last part of this paragraph was lifted wholesale from Emily Fridlund's page on Cornell University's online catalog.)

North Woods of Minnesota

Fridlund grew up in a family of three children in Edina, Minnesota (southwest of Minneapolis), and her family used to vacation on the north shore of Lake Superior, the area where History of Wolves is set. She attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, then Principia College in Illinois, where she earned a bachelor's degree. She earned an MFA in fiction at Washington University in St. Louis, and a doctorate at the University of Southern California. It was while living in LA and missing real winter that she started work on History of Wolves. (See this interview in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.)

Her academic research has included:

• Craft of Fiction
• Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature
• Twentieth-Century and Contemporary British Literature
• Gender Studies, Feminist and Queer Theory
• Narrative Theory
• the Gothic Novel
• Ecocriticism
• Animal Studies
• Creative Writing 

Also because she only recently became a famous author, there is not much on YouTube in the way of interviews. In fact there were only two, one of which had been shot with a phone which had the advantage of being brief, but her voice was barely audible. The one I am posting here is somewhat long, but more interesting, and her voice is easier to hear, although you may still have to crank the volume way up. 

The Lift Bridge in Duluth, Minnesota