BIO

Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of an award-winning 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 with chronic illness, and passionately advocates for equity, dignity, accessible healthcare for all, and freedom from stigma and all forms of violence, discrimination, and exploitation targeting people with disabilities. Her experiences within the U.S. healthcare system and society at large as a woman with mental illness and over a decade of life-changing autoimmune conditions inform much of her recent work. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is writing a memoir.