Emily Fridlund Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

A conversation with Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves, in which she describes the genesis of her debut novel set in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota.

Tell us about the genesis of History of Wolves, which is your first novel.

The first chapter was initially a short story that I wrote for a fiction workshop, in which we read—among other things—two novels about teachers and students: J. M. Coetzee's marvelous Disgrace and Francine Prose's Blue Angel. I remember walking around the lush, manicured campus at the University of Southern California and scribbling a fitful response to what had come to seem to me like an overly examined subject in fiction: that of the experienced male teacher falling for a younger, highly eroticized female student. I began my own story with a middle school history teacher collapsing in front of his class, and a teenage girl reluctantly approaching him, taking his hand. I wanted to think more about this small gesture, the boldness that might inspire it, as well as the longing for human contact. And more broadly, I wanted to tell a story from the perspective a teenage girl who has not been transformed into a sexual object, and yet one who cannot help but understand the way that transformation grants a certain kind coveted visibility, even while it denies other forms of power. Linda—or Mattie or Madeline—was the voice I found ...