Emily R. Frank

Background

Emily Frank was born in 1967, in Richmond, Virginia, United States.

Education

Born into a family of "voracious readers," Frank gravitated to writing at an early age. She spent a lot of time during her childhood around her grandfather, writer Gerold Frank, author of The Boston Strangler, American Death, and Judy.

Emily Frank studied at Vassar College and graduated in 1990. She also attended writing class at the New School of Social Research, which is now New School University.

Career

Through the course of her career, Emily Frank worked in prisons, day treatment centers, a middle school, and an outpatient mental health clinic. A clinical social worker who also established a psychotherapy practice in Manhattan, Frank has had many troubled youths pass her way - in fact, a full third of her caseload has been adolescents. Frank brings her experience and expertise in the area of teen problems to bear in her novels about young New Yorkers at risk and dealing with trauma. Beginning with Life Is Funny, and continuing in America, Friction, and Wave, Frank presents non-sensationalized yet haunting evocations of adolescents and teenagers confronted with daunting situations, including recognizing and surviving sexual abuse.

Although inspired by the experiences she has had as a clinical psychologist, the author maintains that "the characters in those books are not based on any one person." Rather they are a composite of many of the adolescents she has worked with over the years. Speaking with Jean Westmoore in the Buffalo News, Frank reiterated this point: "I do not write or talk about my clients at all. After so many years of working with kids, adolescents, and adults within the criminal justice system, I had this cumulative emotion of so many people who had been lost in the system and hadn't had the one kind of relationship that might have saved them." A clinical social worker who sometimes used writing as a form of therapy with her clients, Frank finally began writing herself in 1996.

Frank did not have a particular audience in mind when composing her first book, a tale of eleven kids that is composed of interlocking stories. Her young protagonists narrate their misadventures over a seven-year period, each in his or her distinctive voice. When she was finished with the manuscript, Frank took the advice of friends and submitted it to a literary agent who liked the story and sent it on to Richard Jackson at DK Incorporated. Jackson also appreciated the story and gave Frank a call, during which he began the editorial process. "It was like a dream come true," Frank told Britton. "I felt honored to be working with him." Published in 2000, Frank's debut novel, Life Is Funny, drew praise from critics. Alice Casey Smith, writing in School Library Journal, called the book a "choral piece of writing that sings of coming-of-age in a multiracial Brooklyn community." Dysfunctional families, racism, drugs, violence, divorce, death, molestation, violence, and abandonment all mar the lives of the book's seven adolescents, but they greet their predicaments with more than anger. As Smith noted, the characters "are boisterous and full of laughter, because after all is said and done, life is funny, isn't it?" The novel was called surprising and accomplished, the language was called gritty and storylines - intense. All in all - the book was praised by critics.

Frank continues her gritty investigations of adolescence and young adulthood with 2002's America, a heartbreaking story of survival, forgiveness, and redemption by some critics. In the book, Frank tells the story of America, a confused fifteen-year-old boy of mixed race who is lost in the labyrinthine system of foster care and hospitalization. So damaged is America by abandonment and abuse that he has tried to kill himself. When he becomes a patient in a residential psychiatric program, he is lucky enough to meet up with Dr. B, who slowly teaches him the lessons of survival.

Frank's second book was greeted with wide critical acclaim. It was called a "wrenching tour de force" as well as a "work of sublime humanity," and a "piercing, unforgettable novel." In Friction Frank again deals with teen trauma and abuse. In this novel, she focuses on an eighth-grade classroom, a microcosm in which friction can arise between students and teachers and between individual students. The book is told in the present tense from the point of view of twelve-year-old Alex, a student in an alternative school. A happy tomboyish kid on the cusp of adolescence, Alex loves soccer, her buddy, Tim, and her teacher, Simon, who she considers to be the best teacher in the school. Simon has managed, in fact, to win over the entire class with his unorthodox teaching style and his friendliness. But all of this changes with the arrival of a new student in class - Stacy. The new girl has a real attitude and at first, Alex is drawn to her. But soon Stacy begins spreading rumors that Simon has more than a friendly interest in Alex. Stacy accuses When accusations of sexual abuse are raised by a new student at Alex's posh private school, Alex and her fellow students are torn between loyalty to a popular teacher and the need to discover the teacher's truth of being a "pervert," and soon the whole class, including Alex, is re-thinking their relationship with him. The police enter the picture, and Alex is confused when they ask her if Simon has ever touched her. Ultimately, through the intercession of Alex's psychiatrist father, things are straightened out, and it becomes apparent that in fact, it is Stacy's father who is doing the abusing. Again reviewers responded warmly to Frank's hard-hitting theme. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that the author "insightfully addresses topics of teen sexuality and child abuse" in a "provocative novel" that is "sure to spark heated discussions." The other critics also said. that the novel "doesn't shy away from difficult topics," and serves as an "excellent way for teachers, counselors, and parents to open up discussions of what constitutes sexual abuse."

Achievements

• Emily Frank is known as a social worker and psychiatrist, helping adults and adolescents to find their treatment in books and characters. She is also a well-received novelist with a number of critically-acclaimed books, some of which were translated in German.

Works

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• book

  • Wrecked

    (A tragic car wreck leads to post-traumatic stress disorde...)

    2007
  • America

    (For eighteen gritty years, a boy dodges the cracks in sys...)

    2002
  • Dime

    (The startling realities of teen prostitution are revealed...)

    2015
  • Life Is Funny

    (From the outside, they're simply a group of urban teenage...)

    1988
  • Friction

    (Simon is the coolest teacher anywhere. Forest Alternative...)

    2003

Views

Speaking with Westmoore, Frank summed up her approach to writing for young adults. "I don't write to make a point," she noted. "If people read one of my novels and take away from it some new information or feelings about the action they want to take, that would be wonderful." In her interview with Atkins, Frank commented that she does not write with an "agenda." Instead, "what's important to me is that readers are moved or touched in some way and that when they finish a book, they feel they've been transported into the world of the characters for a short while."

Emily Frank is known for using books as a part of her therapy.

Quotations: "I start laughing. You have to laugh. Life is just funny sometimes. As long as you remember."

"Writing is therapeutic for me. It's how I process my experiences as a social worker."

Connections

Grandfather:

Gerold Frank

Gerold Frank was a writer, and his granddaughter Emily spent a lot of time around him, developing a craving for writing.

References

• Contemporary Authors vol. 233