Vendela Vida

Vida was born on September 6, 1971, in San Francisco, California.{{Cite news |last=Crown |first=Sarah |date=July 8, 2011 |orig-date=July 8, 2011 |title=A life in writing: Vendela Vida |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jul/08/vendela-vida-interview-life-writing |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230206172816/https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jul/08/vendela-vida-interview-life-writing |archive-date=February 6, 2023 |access-date=August 22, 2024 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} Both of her parents were European immigrants, her mother was from Sweden and her father is Hungarian.{{Cite web|last=Gwinn|first=Mary Ann|date=2021-02-09|title=Review: Vendela Vida's ode to teen strife could have been a great San Francisco novel|url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-02-09/review-vendela-vidas-ode-to-teen-strife-could-have-been-a-great-san-francisco-novel|access-date=2021-12-18|website=Los Angeles Times|language=en-US}} She inherited the name Vendela from her maternal grandmother.

She left California to attend Middlebury College in Vermont where she received her bachelor's degree in English in 1993. It was at Middlebury where a mutual friend introduced her to her future spouse, Dave Eggers.{{Cite web|url=https://middleburycampus.com/6033/features/just-a-couple-of-staggering-geniuses/|title=Just a couple of staggering geniuses|last=Baker|first=Aylie|date=April 10, 2007|website=The Middlebury Campus|access-date=2019-04-30|quote=Eggers met his wife Vendela Vida ’93 through a mutual friend who also attended the College. Vida, an English major graduating Phi Beta Kappa, dabbled in several disciplines, including theatre and Italian.}} She later continued her studies and received a Master of Fine Arts degree at Columbia University.{{Cite news|last=Crown|first=Sarah|date=2011-07-08|title=A life in writing: Vendela Vida|language=en-GB|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jul/08/vendela-vida-interview-life-writing|access-date=2021-12-17|issn=0261-3077|quote=Girls on the Verge, which spun out of Vida's Columbia MFA thesis, is an intriguing exploration of female coming-of-age rituals in America, written when Vida was in her early 20s, only just emerging from the hinterland of fake IDs and underage drinking herself.}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.sjsunews.com/spartan_daily/article_93e66bde-101a-11e7-9729-4fde63066c38.html|title=Vendela Vida, SJSU's Lurie Author-in-Residence|last=Walker|first=Tiana|website=SJSU News|language=en|access-date=2019-04-30|quote=She began as a tutor during her undergraduate years at Middlebury College in Vermont, as well as during her time in graduate school 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.Robert Birnbaum, [http://www.identitytheory.com/vendela-vida Author Interview: Vendela Vida], identitytheory.com, November 2, 2003.

In 2003, Vida co-founded The Believer magazine with Dave Eggers and works as an editor with her friends from grad school Heidi Julavits and Ed Park.{{Cite news|last=Scott|first=A. O.|date=2005-09-11|title=Among the Believers|language=en-US|page=Section 6, Page 38|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/among-the-believers.html|access-date=2021-12-18|issn=0362-4331}} The Believer happens to be located next door to McSweeney's.

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

Vida collaborated with Dave Eggers on the screenplay for the 2009 film Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes and co-starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph.{{Cite web|last=Englander|first=Nathan|date=May 2009|title=Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida|url=https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/dave-eggers-vendela-vida-|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130615073455/https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/dave-eggers-vendela-vida-|archive-date=2013-06-15|access-date=2021-12-18|website=Interview magazine}}{{Cite magazine|last=La Force|first=Thessaly|date=2009-07-06|title=Those Two|url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/those-two|access-date=2021-12-18|magazine=The New Yorker|publisher=Condé Nast|language=en-US}}

In 2017, Vida was a Lurie Author-in-Residence and instructor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.{{Cite web|title=Lurie Visiting Authors, Department of English and Comparative Literature|url=http://www.sjsu.edu/english/faculty/Lurie.html|access-date=2019-04-30|website=San Jose State University (SJSU)}}{{Cite web|date=2016-10-17|title=SJSU Lurie Author-in-Residence 2017: Vendela Vida|url=https://litseen.com/event/sjsu-lurie-author-in-residence-2017-vendela-vida/|access-date=2021-12-18|website=Litseen|language=en-US}}

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.Julian Guthrie, "Vendela Vida wraps trilogy on women in crisis," The San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 2010. In a 2003 Guardian article Vida voiced her plan to author a trilogy of novels "on the subject of violence and rage."Duncan Campbell, "What Do They Mean? Duncan Campbell Meets Vendela Vida", The Guardian, September 23, 2003.

The second novel, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (2007, HarperCollins), is a thriller that takes place in the Sápmi region.{{Cite web|last=Boddy|first=Kasia|date=2007-03-04|title=Review: Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/04/fiction.features4|access-date=2021-12-18|website=the Guardian|language=en}} As a 2013 fellow at the Sundance Labs, Vida alongside Eva Weber developed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name into a script, which received the Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award.{{Cite web|last=Brennan|first=Billy|date=2013-05-09|title=Sundance Institute Selects 2013 Directors and Screenwriters Lab Projects|url=https://filmmakermagazine.com/70382-sundance-institute-selects-2013-directors-and-screenwriters-lab-projects/|access-date=2021-12-18|website=Filmmaker Magazine|language=en-US}}

The Lovers (June 2010, Ecco), author Joyce Carol Oates called it "a riveting and suspenseful novel about an American woman’s voyage to self-discovery.”{{citation needed|date=December 2016}} The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (2015, Ecco/HarperCollins), was inspired by a trip Vida took to Morocco where her bag was stolen.Alex Clark, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/27/vendela-vida-author-divers-clothes-lie-empty-interview Vendela Vida: "You write to know you’re not alone in the world"], The Guardian, 27 September 27, 2015.

Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times notable books of the year, and she is the winner of the 2007 Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path.Author Bio, [https://www.powerhousearena.com/events/book-launch-the-divers-clothes-lie-empty-by-vendela-vida/ Book Launch: The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida], The Powerhouse Arena, June 9, 2015

She is married to author Dave Eggers, has two children, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.{{Cite web|last=Robinson|first=Tasha|date=June 4, 2009|title=Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida|url=https://www.avclub.com/dave-eggers-and-vendela-vida-1798216693|access-date=2021-12-18|website=The A.V. Club|language=en-us}}{{Cite book|last=Galow|first=Timothy W.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kCW6BwAAQBAJ|title=Understanding Dave Eggers|date=2014-11-12|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|isbn=978-1-61117-428-1|language=en}} Vida and Eggers had met in 1998 in San Francisco at a wedding and started dating in 1999.

• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2000 | title=Girls on the Verge: Debutante Dips, Drive-Bys, and Other Initiations | edition=revised | publisher=St. Martin's Press | isbn=978-0-312-26328-7 }}
• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2003 | title=And Now You Can Go | edition=reprint | publisher=Paw Prints | isbn=978-1-4395-7338-9 }}
• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2008 | title=Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name: A Novel | edition=reprint | publisher=HarperCollins | isbn=978-0-06-082838-7 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/letnorthernlight00vend }}
• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2008 | title=The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers | edition=revised | publisher=McSweeney's | isbn=978-1-932416-94-7 }}
• {{citation | last1=Eggers | first1=Dave | year=2009 | title=Away We Go: A Screenplay | last2=Vida | first2=Vendela | publisher=Vintage Books | isbn=978-0-307-47588-6 }}
• {{citation | last1=Julavits | first1=Heidi | year=2009 | title=Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing from the Believer | last2=Park | first2=Ed | last3=Vida | first3=Vendela | publisher=McSweeney's | isbn=978-1-934781-39-5 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/readhard0000unse }}
• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2010 | title=The Lovers: A Novel | publisher=HarperCollins | isbn=978-0-06-082839-4 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060828394 }}
• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2015 | title=The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty | publisher=Ecco/HarperCollins | isbn=9780062110916 }}
• {{citation | last=Vida | first=Vendela | year=2021 | title=We Run the Tides | publisher=Ecco/HarperCollins | isbn=9780062936233 }}

{{reflist}}

• [https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Vendela-Vida-wraps-trilogy-on-women-in-crisis-3259394.php The San Francisco Chronicle on Vendela Vida]
• [http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum131.php Vida interview in Identity Theory]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vida, Vendela}}

Category:1971 births

Category:Living people

Category:American women novelists

Category:Columbia University School of the Arts alumni

Category:Novelists from San Francisco

Category:Middlebury College alumni

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:American people of Swedish descent

Category:San Jose State University faculty