Emma’s dog, Broccoli.
Emma is a holistic health counselor and a coach with an MFA in theatre. They or she are/is also an autistic, nonbinary, invisibly disabled, chronically ill, queer, feminist, anti-racist, Jewish anti-zionist writer who believes in the power of language to convey agency and healing on readers and audiences.
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (and multiple medical traumas), Emma has struggled her whole life with what it means to tell and how to do it best. They are obsessed with how to free the voice, to find new ways and structures for telling, not only for their own healing but also to help others heal. Emma Goldman-Sherman has been trying to inspire other people to write since the age of 6! Their best friend Julie documented this in her 1971 diary (dictated to her mother) that "all [Emma] wants to do is make us write stories!"
Emma works mainly as a playwright, dramaturg and writing coach. They teach for the Dramatists Guild Institute, and they’ve taught at the University of Iowa, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Alliance of Jewish Theatres, New York Writers Workshop, and many other places. They founded and worked as the Resident Dramaturg for the 29th Street Playwrights Collective and the WriteNow Workshop from 2015 - 2021. Before that they taught writing workshops out of their home in New York City. And they still offer classes from home via Zoom!
As a playwright, Emma's work has been produced on 4 continents. Their plays have been finalists at BAPF, Unicorn (3x), Campfire, Cutting Ball’s Risk is This Festival (3x), Henley Rose and Bridge Initiative’s Bechdel Test. Their work has been seen at Golden Thread, The Tank, The Wild Project, The Unesco Literary Festival in New Zealand, Dixon Place, New Ohio, Urban Stages and many other places. Emma earned their MFA from the University of Iowa where they received 3 Norman Felton Awards and the Richard Maibaum Award for plays addressing social justice (Antigone's Sister) and the Jane Chambers Award (Perfect Women, now published by Next Stage Press).
Their poems are published in various journals online and in print. Third Estate Art has published Two Poems. You can read, Remembering the Concubine at Writers Resist. The Weat of Bings, in the Bangalore Review.
So proud and honored to have been awarded 3rd Place from Fish Publishing for my Flash Fiction piece: Because it is Impossible and Yet
Look for “Different, I didn’t know why” as the 3rd place selection for Open Minds Quarterly’s 21st Annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest and is now reprinted HERE in the Last Stanza Anthology.
You can hear Emma’s work online as podcasts at playingonair.org and theparsnipship.com and now at The Ugly Radio
Sad Girls Club Literary Blog published The Witch HERE and 3 Fantasies about my Mother HERE
Zoetic Press NonBinary Review : The Roundworm Shares the News
Watch OUT OF ILLNESS COMES ART
Listen to LIVING IN YOUR POWER on First Online with Fran:
Listen to OUT OF GRIEF COMES ART
Emma has received residencies at Millay, Ragdale and twice at WordBridge where they also worked as a dramaturg. Their work is published in several poetry journals, anthologies and literary magazines including: American Athenaeum, Oberon, Nasty Women Poets, Writers Resist, Queerlings, Chaotic Merge and others. Their plays are published with Brooklyn Publishers, Smith & Kraus, Next Stage Press and Applause.
They are currently working on a musical Tanya's Lit Clit commissioned by Experimental Bitch.
FUKT, her most personal play, had a very successful run in NYC at the Tank this past fall. You can read more about it here: At Show-Score.com or HERE
Emma is a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatists Guild. Their plays are available at New Play Exchange.
Emma is thrilled to be able to offer Brave Space to support all kinds of creatives!