Photo credit: Aaron Mayes / UNLV Photo Services
Olivia Clare Friedman is the author of three books: the novel Here Lies (Grove Atlantic), a short story collection titled Disasters in the First World (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic), and a book of poems titled The 26-Hour Day (New Issues).
Her fourth book, An Arm Fixed to a Wing, a book of poems,
is forthcoming from LSU Press in spring 2025.
In fiction, she is a recipient of an O. Henry Prize,
a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, The American Scholar, and elsewhere. Her novel Here Lies received wonderful reviews in The New York Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and many other venues. Here Lies was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and it won the 2022 Foreword Reviews INDIES Bronze Award. It was a 2022 Great Reads Selection by the Women's National Book Association, and it was longlisted for The Crook's Corner Book Prize, a prize for best debut novel set in the American South.
In poetry, she is a recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship from Colgate University. Friedman's poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, Southern Review, and other journals.
She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Tin House. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Southern California, and UC Berkeley. She's also been a Black Mountain Institute Ph.D. Fellow.
Friedman grew up in Louisiana. She is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. She lives with her family in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.