CAI EMMONS
Featured April 19. 2003
CAI EMMONS, a summa cum laude graduate of Yale, began her career as a playwright. Subsequently, she attended New York University where she received an MFA in film. Her 55-minute 1981 film "A Man Around the House" won the Student Academy Award. Afterwards, she worked in New York film in a variety of capacities and in Los Angeles as a writer of screenplays and teleplays. She wrote episodes for the TV series "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill" and the CBS series "919 Fifth Avenue." And she has twice won an Albee Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been aired on CBS, PBS, and on the A&E Channel. She left the film business in 1996, at the age of 45, to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing. She is now on the faculty at the University of Oregon teaching graduate fiction courses.
Cai will be reading from her first novel, His Mother's Son, which is part domestic drama, part psychological thriller. Inspired by real-life crime, the book explores the psychological and emotional effects on a family both before, and after, a long hidden secret is revealed. His Mother's Son, described as a suspenseful page-turner, was featured in the January 2003 issue of "O: The Oprah Magazine," and starred by Kirkus Review.