Emily H. Cox is a writer, editor, and teaching artist.
I am and always have been a writer—from when I was writing poems on the school bus home from sixth grade in a 99¢ squat little notebook with a red cover, believing that true poetry came from the heart and therefore did not need editing or revising; to clumsily trying to use my own life for a fiction assignment in my first undergrad creative writing class only to have a classmate critique my father character as unbelievable because he had too many flaws (I had not embellished a thing); to all the hours spent at coffee shops throwing words onto a white screen, waiting for something to stick; to getting my first check for a writing commission; to getting my first cover story for a magazine; to the glorious opportunity to focus entirely on writing for two years in my graduate program—and on and on. I’ll be writing until I die.
Among other things, I’ve worked as a bartender, a librarian, college writing instructor, and a tree-climbing arborist. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University and a BA in Media & Cultural Studies from Macalester College. I was an editor for the literary magazines Chanter and Bellingham Review. I’ve lived in Minnesota, California, New York, Louisiana, Washington, and Missouri. Sometimes the road has been my home: me, my car, my dog, and desert dust.
The central axis around which my writing spins is liberation: highlighting the injustices of power and privilege in our society and envisioning liberatory futures. I find joy in imagining alternate possibilities of connecting with one another and with life around us.
Writing is both my tool and my practice of choice. I hope to contribute to a better world for all of us, as well as continually pursue mastery of this craft. Not for ego or accolades, but because the pursuit makes me feel alive every step of the way. In working with other writers, I hope to help them kindle those flames of aliveness through their work, as well.
Here’s where I’m writing from: The most money I’ve ever had at one time, by far, was around $15,000, after the sale of my late father’s house in 2025, and it was gone almost immediately because I had so many outstanding needs to take care of. I have never had meaningful savings. I couldn’t tell you how many times in my life I have had both an overdrawn checking account and maxed out credit cards. I have lived in my car and stolen groceries out of necessity. My ACE score is 5. I have been treated as an object by men in both subtle and violent ways. I have been assumed unqualified or unknowledgeable. I haven’t owned a razor or a scale in almost a decade. Aspects of my health care are restricted by government officials without medical degrees. Who I love and how I love them is under constant legal and cultural threat. Limitations of my body and differences in my brain have consistently been an impediment to meeting my basic needs because I can never fit into rigid employment expectations for long. I simultaneously hold the privileges of whiteness, education, and united states citizenship, which has certainly offered a shield, or at least a cushion, in many ways throughout my life.
My essays, prose poems, reporting, and art criticism have been published in magazines over the years. My memoir is in progress. I also write on Substack on occasion.
