Emily Franklin

Critically-acclaimed author for adults and young adults

EmilyFranklin

Last Night at the Circle Cinema

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Three friends. One final night at the abandoned Circle Cinema. And nothing will ever be the same.

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Reviews

“Best friends Bertucci, Codman, and Olivia are gearing up for the end of their high school careers. Graduation is only one day away and none of them know what the future holds, especially since they will all be away from one another for the first time since they met freshman year. There are so many secrets, feelings, and experiences shared between the three of them that they aren’t quite sure how to make it on their own. Bertucci—the intelligent and tortured prankster—has one last hurrah planned. They must spend the entire night before commencement inside the recently shuttered Circle Cinema, a local movie theater. No one can leave before the break of dawn, and it is in this abandoned theater that they will confront their greatest fears, admit their mistakes, and hopefully see a future beyond high school. This sentimental read is perfect for teens who are either leaving high school behind or looking to their own future with uncertain eyes. The book moves from narrator to narrator, offering readers an in-depth look at all the troubles, struggles, and accomplishments the protagonists went through from each character’s point of view. Olivia, Bertucci, and Codman are all well-developed, realistic, and likable. A surprise ending will put the whole story and the protagonists’ struggles into perspective. VERDICT A sweet and wonderful tale that will get teens thinking about their own futures and friendships.” – School Library Journal

Before

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Groundbreaking fiction about pregnancy from America’s top writers

In this groundbreaking anthology of short fiction from America’s most popular and critically-acclaimed young writer’s, editors Emily Franklin and Heather Swain give voice to the fear, frustration, hope and humor that all play a part in the simultaneously unique and timeless experience of pregnancy in twenty-first-century America.

How to Spell Chanukah

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“What A Holiday! No Pestilence, No Slavery, No Locusts or Atonement. No Real Lesson To Be Absorbed And Passed Down To My Jewish Offspring.”

Eighteen Jewish writers extol, excoriate, and expand our understanding of this most merry of Jewish holidays. Original essays from Steve Almond, Peter Orner, Joanna Smith Rakoff and more.

[h6]Reviews[/h6] [blockquote_with_author author=”–- Publisher’s Weekly”]“Despite a cheery title, the writers in this…book tackle their subject-and its attendant traditions of family, guilt and, well, tradition-with ambivalence, a real sense of soul-searching…trying to make peace with their Chanukah memories…their stories are clearly vivifying. There’s a great deal of kvetching over the influence and excess of Christmas, and not just its consumerism; Jill Kargman, for example, writes about some casual mid-sermon anti-Semitism at a midnight mass. There’s also solidarity to be found, as in Peter Orner’s story of growing up in a family of “Christmas-tree Jews”: “Let me be clear: we had no relationship with Christ beyond loving the mall like everyone else in America.” Standouts include graphic artist Eric Orner’s “Traditions Break,” a compact and involving story about a young woman’s first Chanukah alone; Joanna Smith Rakoff’s “Dolls of the World,” an accomplished troubled-family tale; and Josh Braff’s “The Blue Team,” which happily extols, “What a holiday…. No synagogue, no guilt, no mortar, and no real lesson to be absorbed and passed down to my Jewish offspring. Thank God.”[/blockquote_with_author]

Flânerie

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The Journal
Flânerie

By Emily Franklin
(this appeared in The Journal)

 Around 1840 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out
                   walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of flânerie. 
—Walter Benjamin

 

In the 1840s elegance was walking
your tortoise on a leash

My youngest had a pet ant
and then ate it by mistake

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Moorings / Walking the Dog in Autumn I Stop to Tie My Shoelace

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Moorings / Walking the Dog in Autumn I Stop to Tie My Shoelace

By Emily Franklin
(this appeared in Lunch Ticket)

Suppose you say water.

We’re on the boat, making for Babson Island, one of three tiny beach slabs that connects at high tide. We set anchor, mark the drift, account for wind, row to the shallows. This place has sand dollars. You find some, bring them to me. I will wrap them in tissue to assure a safe journey, feel something split in me when one breaks years after the moments on this island. It’s funny how we know these things: A song will have meanings we can only guess at—the strains of trumpet or your daddy’s rich and your mama’s good-looking making me curl like a fist; the smell of soap, or brie cheese, these things will kill me later, but we don’t know this yet. For now, we’re still on shore, collecting things. Each piece of kelp, a malformed shell, the sand dollars. I want to fill my pockets with them, add them to the collection of you. Even broken, these objects will rest on the mantle as unruined remains.

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That Time I Conducted an Autopsy Without Any Medical Training

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Narratively
That Time I Conducted an Autopsy Without Any Medical Training

By Emily Franklin
(this appeared in Narratively)

I angle the blade, looking down at the cadaver.

Before I press the scalpel into the body, I pause, swallowing saliva and fear. I don’t belong here.

But I do it anyway, cutting into the skin, which gives way, opening.

“Here we go,” I say.

The medical examiner puts down his crossword puzzle with a huff like I’m interrupting his quiet time. He looks at me, waiting. Does he also wonder what the hell I’m doing here?

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