Meet Emily.
Emily Mathis is a writer focusing primarily on essays and creative nonfiction.
Her essay "Men Smoking" is the 2024 nonfiction winner of The Erotic contest by Sonora Review. In the past year, her work has been a finalist for Fourth Genre’s Michael Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize, the Terry Tempest Williams Creative Nonfiction Prize (North American Review), the Sixth Annual Sewanee Review Nonfiction contest, the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards, and Epiphany's Breakout! Prize (Prose 2024).
Her essays have recently appeared in, or are forthcoming in, Sonora Review, Hunger Mountain, Epiphany, Another Chicago Magazine, and others. She is revising a collection of essays and is seeking representation. She lives in North Carolina.
Explore Emily’s latest published works
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Winner of The Erotic Contest, Sonora Review, November 2024
In 6th grade, a small group of boys started carrying around little, red laser beams on keyless keyrings. They were small enough to fit in the palm of the boys’ hands.
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Another Chicago Magazine, February 2024
When I was ten years old, I started masturbating using the Jacuzzi jets of my parents’ bathtub. I’m not sure I even had a concept of masturbation at the time, aside from something boys laughed about, religious peoples said you could go blind from doing, and maybe something, vaguely, from Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
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Epiphany, April 2023
It’s Friendsgiving and I’m sitting on Tiffany’s porch when she pulls her pant leg up and says, “You see these? They are everywhere. All over me.”
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Hunger Mountain, February 2024
When I was seven, my dad moved back to Wilkes County from Budapest and decided that I would be a tennis champion. My parents divorced when I was less than a year old and my father moved away when I was a toddler.