BIO

Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of a novel, The Australian (Dzanc Books), and a short story collection, Greyhounds, coming in October 2026.

After growing up in Downtown Manhattan, Smith-Stevens worked as a server at a pancake house in Delray Beach, Florida, a department store gift-wrapper in Boca Raton, a personal assistant in Beverly Hills, a scriptwriter for virtual patients used by nursing students, and has taught writing and literature at the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, and the Bard Prison Initiative.

Smith-Stevens' writing has been published in BOMB Magazine, Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Wigleaf, Evergreen Review, Subtropics, Southampton Review, Joyland, Conjunctions, the New York Times bestselling and Lambda Literary award-winning anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture (Ed. Roxane Gay, Harper Collins), Against Death: 35 Essays on Living (Ed. Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Anvil Press), and elsewhere. Her work received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XL: Best of the Small Presses, was selected as a Notable Essay in the 2021 Best American Essays (Ed. Alexander Chee), and was twice included in Wigleaf 's Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions. She holds a B.A. in literature from Bard College and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Florida.

Smith-Stevens lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two street dogs from Baku, Azerbaijan. She is working on a memoir.