Emily Clemente is a doctoral student in the University of Missouri’s Creative Writing program. Originally from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, she earned her MFA in 2025 from Florida State University. Her work has been published in December and Jellyfish Review among others, and she was a semifinalist for the 2025 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize, a nominee for the 2024 Pushcart Prize, and a finalist for the 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Award. Her writing has received support from the Southampton Writers' Conference, and she has held editorial roles in fiction for journals such as The Missouri Review, The Carolina Quarterly, and Southeast Review, where she served as Assistant Fiction Editor.

Emily graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Highest Distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in English & Comparative Literature and Honors in Creative Writing. She served as the President for both the Alpha Phi Psi chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society and the Student Organization for Undergraduate Literature, and her senior thesis earned the 2022 Max Steele Award in Fiction.

Emily currently teaches creative writing to undergraduates at the University of Missouri. She was a visiting writer for Greensboro Young Writer's Camp and an executive board member for CampWrite UNC, where she organized and taught lessons in creative writing for middle and high school students. She served as a Guest Judge for the South Florida Writer's Association 2025 Junior Orange Bowl, and she has also taught writing to veterans through the Warrior Scholar Project and inmates through the Incarcerated Writer's Program.