Emily Clemente is an incoming doctoral student in the University of Missouri’s Creative Writing PhD program. She earned her MFA from Florida State University, where she served as Assistant Fiction Editor for the Southeast Review and taught both composition and fiction writing to undergraduate students. Her work has been published in journals such as December and Jellyfish Review, and her short story, “Alaskan Folk Song” was a finalist for the Curt Johnson Award in Fiction and was nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize.

In 2022, 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 the Alpha Phi Psi chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society, and her senior thesis, California Landing and Other Stories, earned the 2022 Max Steele Award in Fiction. 

Emily was a visiting writer for Greensboro Young Writer's Camp and an executive board member for CampWrite UNC for several years, where she organized and taught lessons in creative writing for middle and high school students. She has also taught writing to veterans through the Warrior Scholar Project and inmates through the Incarcerated Writer's Program.