Emily Nemens


Emily Nemens is an American writer, editor and illustrator. Since April 2018 she has served as the editor of The Paris Review.

Life and education

Born in Seattle, Nemens studied art history and studio art at Brown University. At Louisiana State University she received a degree in creative writing.

Career

Nemens is an alumna of the Kerouac Project writing residency in Orlando, Florida, where she completed a short-story collection called “Scrub.” Nemens worked as an editor at the Center for Architecture and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In Louisiana, she worked at The Southern Review and became its co-editor.
In April 2018, then still widely unknown in the New York literary scene, she was appointed editor of The Paris Review by a five-person committee composed of Susannah Hunnewell, Akash Shah, Jeanne McCulloch, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Mona Simpson. She succeeded Lorin Stein, who had resigned after allegations of sexual harassment. She is the second woman to lead the Review.

Work

Nemens has published poetry, fiction and essays in n+1, Esquire and The Gettysburg Review.
As an illustrator, she has obtained a large following for her watercolor portraits of female politicians on Tumblr.
Nemens published her debut novel, The Cactus League, in 2020.