Emme Lund’s “The Boy With a Bird in His Chest” Is a Heartbreaking Yet Hopeful Novel

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In this episode 281, we visit with Emme Lund, author of “The Boy With a Bird in His Chest,” a heartbreaking yet hopeful novel about the things that make us unique.

“The Boy with a Bird in His Chest” grapples with the fear, depression, and feelings of isolation that come with believing that we will never be loved, let alone accepted, for who we truly are, and learning to live fully and openly regardless.

Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of “Less,” had this to say about the book: “Lund has created a fable for our age: a modern coming of age full of love, desperation, heartache and magic. An honest celebration of life and everything we need right now in a book.”

Connect With the Author

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About the Author:

Emme Lund is an author living and writing in Portland, OR. She has an MFA from Mills College.

Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, TIME Magazine, The Rumpus, Apt Magazine, and Paper Darts, among many other venues.

In 2016, Quiet Lightning Books published a limited run of her book, The Sacred Text of Rosa Who is Great, complete with art by Stella Peach, about which Andrew Sean Greer wrote, “I have been looking for this book for years! Against every modern trend: a brilliant, old-world, handmade piece of magic.”

In 2019, she was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Fiction. She is represented by Cassie Mannes Murray at Howland Literary.

Her debut novel The Boy with a Bird in His Chest will be released on February 15, 2022 by Atria Books.

More Praise for the book:

“Emme Lund’s The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a beautiful, tender book. I was deeply moved by this story; very caught up in the ways in which family, grief, love, queerness, and vulnerability all intersect. Lund’s sentences are sweet and stick to your ribs. I found myself falling in love with these characters—these messy, deeply realized, fully lovable, and wonderfully human people. The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a terrific first novel and Emme Lund is a profoundly gifted writer.”

—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth

“The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a beautiful and atmospheric allegory for what we hide in the world, executed with tense lyricism.”

—Christine Hyung-Oak Lee author of Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember

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