Frederick Reiken

Reiken was born in New Jersey in 1966,{{Cite web|title=Reiken, Frederick|url=https://nias.knaw.nl/fellow/reiken-frederick/|access-date=2020-08-19|website=NIAS|language=en-GB}} and he attended the Pingry School.{{Cite news|last=Wilson|first=Judy|date=December 20, 2007|title=What Exit?|work=NJ Jewish News|url=http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/122007/ltWhatExit.html|url-status=dead|access-date=February 12, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080726173446/http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/122007/ltWhatExit.html|archive-date=July 26, 2008}} He earned a B.A. in Biology at Princeton University in 1988,{{Cite web|last=Rosen|first=Judith|date=August 28, 2000|title=Frederick Reiken: Love and Loss in the Meadowlands|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/27324-frederick-reiken-love-and-loss-in-the-meadowlands.html|access-date=2020-08-21|publisher=Publishers Weekly}}{{Cite web|date=2007|title=Undergraduate Academic Files, Series 7|url=http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/pacscl/ead.pdf?q=Frederick%20Reiken&id=PACSCL_PRIN_MUDD_AC19807USNjP&|access-date=August 22, 2020|website=dla.library.upenn.edu}} where for his senior thesis he researched the behavioral ecology of island feral horses.{{Cite web|date=September 13, 2000|title=A sense of where he is : Frederick Reiken '88 talks about his new book and the writing life|url=https://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/features/features_02.html|access-date=2020-08-23|website=www.princeton.edu}} He earned an M.F.A. at the University of California, Irvine, in 1992.{{Cite web|last=Reiken|first=Frederick|date=1992|title=Manuscript, Wild Ass Mirage, MFA Thesis|url=https://uci.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991031562449704701&context=L&vid=01CDL_IRV_INST:UCI&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,reiken&sortby=rank&offset=0|access-date=2020-08-23|website=uci.primo.exlibrisgroup.com|language=en}}

Reiken is married and has two daughters.{{Cite web|date=February 2013|title=Frederick Reiken|url=https://www.thesunmagazine.org/contributors/frederick-reiken|access-date=2020-08-23|website=The Sun Magazine|language=en-US}}

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| quote = Reiken credits the five years he spent as a journalist with teaching him a great deal about writing, or what he only half-mockingly refers to as "the art of restraint. I learned very quickly if I wrote anything self-indulgent, it would be chopped out and there would be a gaping hole. To keep the writing good, I had to keep it clean. That generalized to thinking more about the reader and ultimately what was in service to the story."

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Reiken began thinking of himself as a writer after a poetry class at Princeton with J. D. McClatchy. In addition, Paul Auster's introductory fiction course and John McPhee's "Literature of Fact" course encouraged him to follow both his passions, science and writing. Following graduation in 1988, he went to the Negev desert as a wildlife biology researcher studying the population dynamics of Persian onagers, a species of wild ass.

After completing his M.F.A., in 1992–1993 he was an artist-in-residence and then assistant director at Cummington Community of the Arts.{{Cite web|date=February 5, 2020|title=Revisiting: A Q+A with Frederick Reiken|url=http://www.gregrobson.net/?p=1715|access-date=2020-08-23|website=Step Inside This House}}

From 1992 to 1998, he was a reporter, nature writer, and columnist at the Daily Hampshire Gazette.{{Cite web|date=2005|title=Reiken, Frederick {{!}} Encyclopedia.com|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/reiken-frederick|access-date=2020-08-23|website=www.encyclopedia.com}} In 1997 he published his first novel.

In 1992, he began writing sketches that would eventually become his second novel, published in 2000. His third novel was published in 2010.{{Cite web|date=2011|title=Day for Night: A Novel {{!}} IndieBound.org|url=https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316077576|access-date=2020-08-23|website=www.indiebound.org|language=en}}

Reiken's essays and short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Western Humanities Review, Glimmer Train, and The Writer's Chronicle.{{Cite web|title=Frederick Reiken's "Day for Night" Collection -|url=https://atom.emerson.edu/index.php/reiken|access-date=2020-08-23|website=atom.emerson.edu}}

Since 1999, Reiken has taught creative writing at Emerson College in Boston.

Reiken's first novel, The Odd Sea (1998), won the Hackney Literary Award and was selected one of the best first novels of the year by Library Journal and Booklist. Jane Vandenburgh of The New York Times said the novel covers "mainly psychological terrain", of a family "who must somehow cope with the mysterious disappearance of the oldest son, 16-year-old Ethan...which eloquently remind us that the unfathomable can indeed happen, that the unbearable must be bravely withstood".{{Cite news|last=Vandenburgh|first=Jane|date=1998-08-09|title=Out of Sight|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/09/books/out-of-sight.html|access-date=2020-08-21|issn=0362-4331}} Judith Rosen wrote it is "a contemporary tale of loss based loosely on The Odyssey". Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said it is "a haunting first novel that takes a horrifying family calamity and turns it into a form of magic... [Reiken] has skillfully balanced this pain against the hopefulness of the narrator."{{Cite news|last=Lehmann-Haupt|first=Christopher|date=1998-06-18|title=BOOKS OF THE TIMES; A Lost Son and His Family's Odyssey|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/18/books/books-of-the-times-a-lost-son-and-his-family-s-odyssey.html|access-date=2020-08-24|issn=0362-4331}}

Reiken's second novel, The Lost Legends of New Jersey (2000), was listed on The New York Times "Notable Book" list. Critic Gary Krist wrote, "Whether he's depicting the mournful uneasiness of two siblings on a last moonlit bike ride or the bewilderment of an estranged father giving himself over to the healing power of a Jacques Cousteau special, Reiken knows how to charge the quietest domestic scenes with consequence and emotion."{{Cite news|last=Krist|first=Gary|date=2000-08-20|title=My Dad's Cheating With Your Mom|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/20/books/my-dad-s-cheating-with-your-mom.html|access-date=2020-08-21|issn=0362-4331}}

His third novel, Day for Night (2010), was favorably reviewed by Patrick Ness of The Guardian, who wrote it is "a portmanteau novel: discrete stories from different points of view that combine to tell a larger narrative".{{cite news|last1=Ness|first1=Patrick|date=23 July 2010|title=Day for Night by Frederick Reiken|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jul/24/day-for-night-frederick-reiken|access-date=12 February 2016|work=The Guardian}} S. Kirk Walsh of The Los Angeles Times wrote, "A thought-provoking, intricate portrait of the far-reaching, intergenerational implications of the Holocaust —and how fortuitous circumstances can bring people from both sides of a tragedy closer together, and, in some cases, further apart."{{Cite web|last=Walsh|first=S. Kirk|date=2010-05-16|title=Book Review: 'Day for Night' by Frederick Reiken|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-may-16-la-ca-frederik-reiken-20100516-story.html|url-access=subscription|access-date=2020-08-23|website=Los Angeles Times|language=en-US}}

• 1997 Hackney Award for First Novel, The Odd Sea{{Cite web|title=The Odd Sea|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-15-100360-0|access-date=2020-08-22|website=www.publishersweekly.com}}
• 2000 New York Times Notable Books of the Year, The Lost Legends of New Jersey{{Cite news|date=2000-12-03|title=Notable Books|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/03/books/notable-books.html|access-date=2020-08-22|issn=0362-4331}}
• 2000 Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year, The Lost Legends of New Jersey{{Cite news|date=2000-12-03|title=Best Books of 2000 : The lost legends of New Jersey, by Frederick Reiken|pages=278|work=The Los Angeles Times|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57811633/best-books-of-2000-the-lost-legends/|access-date=2020-08-22}}
• 2010 Finalist for the Los Angeles Times, Book Prize, Day for Night{{Cite web|date=2011-02-22|title=2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists announced|url=https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/02/latimes-2010-book-prize-finalists.html|access-date=2020-08-23|website=LA Times Blogs - Jacket Copy|language=en-US}}
• Best novels of 2010, The Washington Post, Day for Night{{Cite news|date=2010-12-17|title=The best novels of 2010|newspaper=The Washington Post|language=en-US|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121003240.html|access-date=2020-08-24|issn=0190-8286}}

• {{Official website|https://frederickreiken.com/}}
• [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126618043 NPR interview with Scott Simon, May 8, 2010]

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Category:1966 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:American male novelists

Category:Emerson College faculty

Category:Novelists from Massachusetts

Category:Writers from Livingston, New Jersey

Category:Pingry School alumni

Category:Princeton University alumni

Category:University of California, Irvine alumni