Playwriting & Poetry by Emma Goldman-Sherman
Emma with short, purple hair, red circular glasses, in a white button-down shirt by a red brick wall. Photo: Melinda Hall
PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE:
Literary Magazines and Reviews:
American Athenaeum; Anodyne; Anti-Heroin Chic; Bangalore Review; Bellingham Review; Boudin; Brilliant Flash Fiction; broadzine; Carmina; Chaotic Merge; Courtship of the Wings; Discretionary Love; Eckleburg; Exist Otherwise; Ghost Furniture Catalogue; Gigantic Sequins; Ink in Thirds; International Human Rights Arts Movement; long con; The Manhattan Times; The Mersey Review; Moss Piglet; NonBinary Review; North Dakota Review; Oberon; One Art; Open Minds Quarterly; NUNUM; pink plastic house; Poetry Archive; Poetry Catalog; Quartet; Queerlings; Sad Girls Club Blog; Second Coming; Strange Horizons; Telephone; The Word’s Faire; Third Estate Art; tinderbox; Toyon; Wild Greens; Writers Resist.
ANTHOLOGIES:
Best MicroFictions 2025, 2026; IHRAM Anthology; The Nature of Our Times; Nasty Women Poetry Anthology; 2024 Pride Anthology Before the Veil; The Fish Anthology, 2023; An Adrienne Rich Tribute Anthology from Split Oak Press.
CHAPBOOKS:
Dear Palestine, forthcoming from Moonstone Press (Philadelphia), 2026.
Possible Paths for the Minotaur, a micro-chapbook published by Ghost City Press 2025 Summer Series
As a playwright, Emma's plays have been produced on 4 continents and include Abraham's Daughters (a finalist for Waterworks, Henley Rose and Cutting Ball's Risk is This) online as a podcast at TheParsnipShip.com. Other podcasts at PlayingOnAir.org and elsewhere.
Their plays are published with Smith & Krause, Applause, Brooklyn Publishers and Next Stage Press. Their work has been named a finalist at BAPF, Henley Rose, Bridge Initiative, Campfire, Unicorn (3x), Waterworks, and Cutting Ball (3x) and semi-finalists at JPP (2x) and the O'Neill.
Emma has received residencies at Millay Arts, Ragdale and twice at WordBridge where they also returned to work as a dramaturg. They have also been a dramaturg at Great Plains Theatre Conference.
More at the newplayexchange.com.
Emma teaches and offers dramaturgy, coaching and support to writers and other artists at https://www.bravespace.online/ and they write weekly on Creativity and Wholeness here: https://goldmansherman.substack.com/
Emma has taught at the Dramatists Guild Institute, PlayPenn, University of Iowa, Washington & Lee University, The Dramatists Guild of America, The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, PlayPenn, the Alliance of Jewish Theatres, Great Plains Theatre Conference, NYPL and many other venues.
Emma founded and ran The 29th Street Playwrights Workshop from 2015 - 2021 for the development of plays by mature, emerging theatre artists. In their tenure there, they received support from LMCC and the Puffin Foundation. Now in its 10th Season, 29th Street continues to serve playwrights.
As a poet, Emma was told to stop writing poetry by a professor at the University of Iowa who asked Emma to promise to stop. Back when they didn’t know they were autistic, they took everything quite literally and promised. Diagnosed during the pandemic, they realized they didn’t have to uphold that promise. Freed to write poetry again, Emma has been making up for all that lost time (30 years).
AWARDS INCLUDE:
“The Summer My Mother Remarried,” nominated by Vallie Lynn Watson at Boudin, McNeese’s spicy online cousin and chosen by Diane Seuss for Best Microfictions 2026.
“ICE Field Office, 64 Gricebrook Road, St. Albans, Vermont” was selected for Honorable Mention for the Rhonda Gail Williford Award from the International Human Rights Arts Movement.
“Ode to The Burner Boys”, Finalist for the 49th Parallel Prize judged by Gabrielle Bates for The Bellingham Review.
“Minotaur in the Backyard,” Winner of the 13th Annual Gigantic Sequins Poetry Award judged by Jenny Sadre-Orafai.
“Appetites,” nominated by Geoffrey Miller at NUNUM and chosen by Dawn Raffel for Best Microfictions 2025.
“Because It Is Impossible And Yet,” 3rd Place in the 2023 Fish Anthology for Flash Fiction judged by Kit deWaal.
3rd Place in the 21st Annual Brainstorm Contest at Open Minds Quarterly with the poem, “different, I didn’t know why.”
Emma’s play, Abraham’s Daughters, based on their research and documentation of human rights abuses during the first Intifada is available for free as a podcast.
5 poems in Eckleburg.org
“Dear Palestine” is available at Toyon with an Arabic translation.
“Ode to the Burner Boys” was a finalist for the 49th Parallel Award at The Bellingham Review and is forthcoming.
“To Scroll Beyond Belief” is published at Second Coming, and ““Israel<3”” is forthcoming there later this year.
3 flash fictions are available at Boudin, The McNeese Review, here.
Quartet will be publishing “Kadye Dressed as a Boy in the Dark,” in 2026.
O To Be a Child on the Island of Inchkeith in Poetry Catalog
“Talk to Pipes” is published in Ghost Furniture Catalogue
Two Poems in Anti-Heroin Chic.
“As Far As Fathers Go” appeared in Ink in Thirds, Spring 2025.
Emma’s story, “Appetites,” originally published in NUNUM available anthologized in Best Microfictions 2025.
“We Used to Save the Whales” at Nature of Our Times.
“I’ve Never Been a Country” at The Mersey Review.
“My Heart Broke in Childhood, But My Child Changed All That” at Discretionary Love.
“The Narrow Place” at Wild Greens.
“Barbie Reports from the DreamHouse” in tinderbox.
Third Estate Art has published Two Poems. You can read, Remembering the Concubine at Writers Resist and The Weat of Bings, in the Bangalore Review.
Fish Publishing awarded 3rd Place for Emma’s Flash Fiction piece: Because it is Impossible and Yet
“Different, I didn’t know why” was the 3rd place selection for Open Minds Quarterly’s 21st Annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest and is now reprinted HERE in the Last Stanza Anthology, vol 14. “The Stocked Pond” is available in the Last Stanza Anthology, vol. 18.
You can hear Emma’s work online as podcasts at playingonair.org and theparsnipship.com.
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
Emma has received residencies at Millay, Ragdale and twice at WordBridge where they also worked as a dramaturg.
FUKT, the play that inspired Emma to create Brave Space, had a very successful run in NYC at the Tank in 2022. You can read more about it here: At Show-Score.com
Emma is a proud member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatists Guild. More info and their plays are available at New Play Exchange.
Emma is thrilled to be able to offer Coaching & Brave Space to support
all kinds of creatives and those who want to live more creatively!
To inquire about Creative Coaching services, reach out & book a FREE Consultation Call