Carol Emshwiller Papers

Carol Emshwiller (b. April 12, 1921) was born Agnes Carolyn Fries in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the eldest of four children. Growing up, she spent several years in France and Germany while her father, a professor of English and linguistics, was on sabbatical. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in music in 1945, she joined the Red Cross, aiding U.S. troops in postwar Italy, then returned to Ann Arbor enrolling in art school where she would meet her future husband, Ed Emshwiller. They married in 1949 and attended the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts (1949–50), toured Europe on a motorcycle, and eventually settled in Levittown, New York.

Through her husband, she met several science fiction authors, fully immersing herself in the science fiction scene of the late 50s and 60s. Emshwiller took classes with Anatole Broyard and Kay Boyle, the poet Kenneth Koch, and credits the Milford science fiction workshops founded by Damon Knight as the location where she learned the most.

Emshwiller began publishing science fiction with "This Thing Called Love" for Future in 1955. Her short stories with their experimental and consistently feminist were often associated with science fiction’s “New Wave.” In 1974, Emshwiller became an adjunct assistant professor at New York University and published her first story collection, Joy in Our Cause (1974). Emshwiller published her first novel in 1988, Carmen Dog. A few years after Ed Emshwiller’s death in 1990, Carol underwent a significant transition both in her life and in her approach to writing, becoming a full-time writer. In the end, she published only six novels -- two of them Westerns set in the early 20th Century, and four science fiction novels. Carol Emshwiller retired from teaching in 2003 and continued to write until 2011 due to issues stemmed from her failling eyesight. She died in February 2019.