Vendela Vida

Vendela Vida (born September 6, 1971) is an American novelist, journalist, editor and educator.  She is the author of multiple books, a writing teacher, and an editor of The Believer magazine.  In 2017, Vida was a Lurie Author-in-Residence and instructor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.  She is married to author, Dave Eggers, has two children, and lives in the Bay Area. 

Early life
Vida was born on the 6 September 1971 in San Francisco, California.  Both of her parents were European immigrants.  Her mother was from Sweden, and she inherited the name Vendela from her maternal grandmother.  She left California to get her Bachelor's degree in English in 1993 at Middlebury College in Vermont, and it was through a mutual friend from her undergraduate degree that she met her future spouse, Dave Eggers.  She later continued her studies and received a Master of Fine Arts degree at Columbia University.  After graduating, she interned at the Paris Review, and she adapted her master's degree thesis into her first book, Girls on the Verge. 

Books
Vida has written multiple books and the most recent, The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty, was published by Ecco in June 2015. 

Published in 2003, And Now You Can Go is a novel set in New York City, San Francisco, and the Philippines, tracing the impulsive journeys of a young woman in the wake of an assault.  In a 2003 Guardian article Vida voiced her plan to author a trilogy of novels "on the subject of violence and rage." 

The second novel, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, takes place in Lapland and was published in 2007.  As a fellow at the Sundance Labs, Vida developed it into a script, which received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. 

The Lovers was published in June 2010 by Ecco.  Joyce Carol Oates called it "a riveting and suspenseful novel about an American woman’s voyage to self-discovery.” 

The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty was inspired by a trip Vida took to Morocco where her bag was stolen. 

Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. 

Film work
Vida collaborated on the screenplay for the 2009 film Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes and co-starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. 

826 Valencia
She is a co-founder and board member of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit organization that teaches creative writing to children and teens. 

Cultural references
"Vendela Vida" is also the name of a 2010 song by indie/folk rock band Dinosaur Feathers on their album Fantasy Memorial. 

Works

References

External links
The San Francisco Chronicle on Vendela Vida
Nathan Englander in Interview on Vendela Vida
A.O. Scott in The New York Times Magazine on Vendela Vida and The Believer
The Guardian on Vendela Vida (2011)
The Guardian on Vendela Vida (2003)
Vendela Vida Interview in Identity Theory

Category:1971 births
Category:Living people
Category:American women novelists
Category:Columbia University School of the Arts alumni
Category:Writers from San Francisco
Category:Middlebury College alumni
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:American people of Swedish descent