As a child actress growing up in Maryland, she traveled all over the world to perform in musicals, film, and television, from network TV to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the Clinton White House. At Wesleyan University, she earned a BA in Film studies while also taking all the creative writing, religion, and theatre classes she could. 

Emily has worked many jobs that required storytelling-- in PR for the Baltimore Orioles for two seasons (day one found her in the locker room getting post-game quotes from naked MLB players), as a writer for a web sitcom, as an undercover restaurant reviewer/spy, as an actor in a theatre troupe that taught sex ed in NYC public schools, as a diner waitress on popular daytime soap opera One Life to Live, and as a standardized patient training doctors to be more empathetic-- but her favorite job to date is writing stories for kids and anyone who has ever been a kid, so... everyone! 

As a journalist, Emily writes about sustainability, organic/eco-friendly skincare, and healthy beauty products for Oprah Quarterly, Allure, Organic Spa, and many other publications. Her recent 8-page feature for Oprah Quarterly Magazine (now also available on Oprah Daily): What "Clean Beauty" Means Now, investigates the science and ethics of sustainability, consumption and beauty. 

She also writes about gun violence and gun control (for publications like Publisher's Weekly, Today.com and Kveller.com), about parenting, and about life as a neurodivergent person thriving with OCD and Synesthesia, as in this article for Oprah Daily about swimming, writing, and OCD. Emily was honored to be the Keynote Speaker at the 30th annual International OCD Foundation Conference in July, 2025. 


The author of two middle grade novels and three forthcoming picture books, Emily loves writing about the things that people need to talk about more, hard topics, sensitive subjects, and does so from the perspective of her own intersectional identities: as a Jew with progressive/inclusive values and as a neurodivergent person.

Her first novel, AfterMath, was published in 2021. Emily continues to donate a portion of proceeds from it to gun violence prevention organizations such as Everytown, Moms Demand, Teachers Unify, Survivors Empowered, and March for our Lives. AfterMath was chosen as a Nate's Reads bookclub pick by Nate Berkus, a Mighty Girl's Books of the Year winner for 2021, and won the Mathical Book Prize in 2022 (awarded in partnership with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and in coordination with the Children’s Book Council (CBC).) Comedian and activist Amy Schumer calls AfterMath  "A gift to the culture," and author Judith Viorst pronounced it "pretty close to perfect." AfterMath was positively reviewed in Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, and many more. You can see more press and reviews here.

Emily and her husband have two fun, funny kids, who are partly the inspiration for some of her books. The family moved from New York City to Los Angeles in 2019, and while they miss the Big Apple, Emily gets to swim laps outside year-round, try to keep up with her kids on beautiful hikes, and complain about how "cold" it is when it's 60 degrees, like all the other Angelenos. 

Aside from writing, Emily loves music, fighting the patriarchy, math for kids, baseball, things that smell good, swimming laps, chocolate and peanut butter together, watching television, and watching television. (She knows she included watching television twice, but that's how much she loves it.)