Emily Barth Isler has been telling stories for as long as she can remember.

Emily Barth Isler has been telling stories for as long as she can remember. As a child actress, 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. Emily also writes regularly 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.

Emily and her husband have two fun, funny kids, who are partly the inspiration for some of her books. They LOVE making up songs around the house, but no one else besides Emily wants to take the Family Band pro-- go figure! Their 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, drag the kids on too-long hikes, and complain about how "cold" it is when it's 60 degrees, like all the other Angelenos. 

Emily is a passionate advocate for gun control in America, and has written extensively on the topic for publications like Publisher's Weekly, Today.com and Kveller.com, as well as donating a portion of proceeds from her debut novel, AfterMath, 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 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. Emily's second book, The Color of Sound, features a character who, like Emily, has synesthesia, and Emily also writes and speaks often about life with OCD.  She loves writing for kids because she wants her kids and all their peers to grow up in a world that is kinder and more inclusive and representative of what life really looks like. She's actively involved with The StatesProject.org in effort to raise money to support democracy in local and state governments all over the U.S. 

Aside from writing, Emily loves country music (but not the racist kind!!), 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.)