About Emily

At the heart of all my work is some question or obsession: Who is this person? Why did these events occur? Whose story is being told? And whose isn’t? Writing to find out the answers to the questions is the way I've come to understand the world around me. 

I started writing professionally when I was eighteen, with an internship at a large city newspaper. I've written marketing, policy, and communications documents for corporations, published short stories and essays, and taught students in a wide variety of settings, from universities to locked facilities. These days, I'm writing essays and a little short fiction. 

Here are some of my recent obsessions: I've written about murder trials; illness; holiday decorations; the relationship of raising chickens and children to fascism; how reading Richard Wright and Jean-Paul Sartre got me through existential despair; how Michael de Montaigne taught me to understand life, death, and horses; and the joys and difficulties of families, among many other subjects. You can see a list of recent publications by clicking on the Publications page. 

Teaching gigs include Denver’s Lighthouse Writers, Rocky Mountain Land Library, and mindfulness and writing classes for Golden’s Pranatonic Yoga Studio, as well as and daylong workshops for various arts organizations. I teach because I love spending time with other writers and helping them explore their obsessions and tell their stories. And I teach because I'm a craft-of-writing nerd who enjoys researching approaches and ideas for my students. 

I graduated from Columbia University with a double concentration in History and English literature. I have an MFA in Fiction from The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. My work has been acknowledged by Best American Essays and Best of the Net.

I live on a small farm in western Colorado.