Emme Lund Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Emme Lund is a literary fiction novelist from Portland Oregon.

The author went to Mills College where she graduated with her master’s degree in the Fine Arts. In 2019, she got a fiction fellowship from the Oregon Literary Arts organization.
She published “The Boy with a Bird in His Chest” her debut in 2022 and this would be her breakout work.

The book made the longlist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, was an Oregon Book Award finalist, and was named a best book of the year by The Portland Mercury and Buzzfeed.
The novel was also included on lists in Shondaland, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, USA Today, The Advocate, and People Magazine.

In addition to her fiction novels, Emme Lund has written many essays about her lived experience as a transwoman.

These essays advocating for queer and trans rights in legislation have been published in the likes of Time Magazine, Rumpus, Autostraddle, and the Mercury among many other publications.

Lund was born the son of a teacher and salesman in Portland Oregon.

Similar to many authors, Emme loved reading while he was a child. When he was ten years old, he loved listening to Country music particularly the likes of Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks.
The ten-year-old aspiring author then got into guitar playing, even though all he dreamed about was one day becoming a cowboy.

Emme also had an obsession with RL Stine and Bruce Coville and at some point, he thought he was destined to become a horror movie scriptwriter.

Once he got over that, he started thinking that fate had it for him to become a cartoon drawer like Jim Davis and Bill Waterson.

It was while he was living in Portland that he began writing and during this time penned short stories and regularly contributed to a print skateboarding magazine and an online beer magazine.
In 2011, he moved to Oakland, California, and there began attending Mills College as he worked towards getting his MFA degree.

Following his graduation from college, he would become a prolific author whose works have been in the likes of Nib Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Xenith Magazine, Paper Darts, Bad Futurist, 34th Parallel, and 580 Split.
He is also the co-editor and co-founder of the journal “HOLD.”

When Emme Lund decided that she had better chances of becoming an author by getting an MFA, she had about 100 pages of a story and a clear idea of what type of novel she would have preferred to write.
By the time she was enrolling at Mills College, she had been working all manner of restaurant jobs for years and thought it was time she took her writing more seriously if she wanted to achieve her dream.
However, just like many novelists who attend MFA programs, the book she enrolled with was not the same one she graduated with.

After doing two months at Mills College, she had the idea for another story which would then take over what she had begun writing.

It first came to her as a crisis given that she really wanted to finish the first manuscript which she considered her baby. However, things began shifting for Lund both personally and creatively.
Unlike Portland where she came from, she found the community in Oakland to be very welcoming and for the first time, began to explore her voice and her queerness.

The story of a boy with a bird in his chest continues pushing itself into her work. She at first penned it as a short story but it would not stop talking to her that she ultimately made it into a novel.
It was this work that would form part of the thesis for her MFA.

Ever since Emme Lund published her work and it went on to become a critically acclaimed work of fiction, she has become even more interested in life as an author.

Reading is something that she has been doing for years and even now, it is one of those things that she loves to do as a hobby.

Some of her recent reads include Sarah Moss’s “Summerwater,” and Michael Cunningham’s “The Hours.” Lund is also a huge fan of the Larry Mitchell written and Ned Asta illustrated “The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions.”
This work is a popular cult classic that critiques the patriarchy and capitalism and is set in the fantasy lands of Ramrod.

She has often loved reading strange books and hence half the time, most of the works that she has read and found fascinating or exciting are ones hardly anyone has ever heard about.

Emme Lund’s novel “The Boy with a Bird in His Chest” is a fascinating work of fiction that introduces Owen Tanner, a boy who has a chatty bird in his chest.
From the time the bird appeared in his chest, his mother had hidden him from the world as he was what would be referred to in medical forums as a Terror.

After hiding for ten years, Owen goes on a bold trip to the outdoors while a forest fire is raging and his life is changed forever.

Unexpectedly, Owen has to flee the only place he called home so that he can go to Washinton to live in plain sight with his cousin and his uncle.

In the big city, he finds joy among friends and family where he is embraced fully and even falls in love only to suffer a devastating rejection and heartbreak.

But in the most unexpected place, he finds a spark of happiness and becomes determined to live his truth, even though there are all manner of people who try to tear him down.
Nonetheless, the threats continue to constantly loom and he cannot help but wonder if he will ever get out of the cycle of fear.

It is a hopeful and heartbreaking novel that tells of the things that make us lovable and unique.

It is also a work that grapples with depression, fear, and isolation that can make people believe that they will never be accepted, let alone be loved for who they truly are.