About Emily
Award-winning author Emily Pohl-Weary has published five books, a series of comics, and a literary magazine. Her next novel, Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl, is forthcoming from Penguin Razorbill (Canada) and Skyscape/Amazon Children’s Books (U.S.) in fall 2013.
She’s currently writing a new collection of poetry and, recently, her feature screenplay Life on the Edge, received revision financing from Astral Media’s Greenberg Fund.
In 2008, Emily founded the Toronto Street Writers, a free writing group for inner-city youth in the neigbourhood where she grew up. For three years, she also led a weekly writing workshop for residents of Sagatay (Na-Me-Res), a long-term transitional home for First Nations, Metis and Inuit men. Her workshops focus on writing skills, creative empowerment, learning tools for conflict-resolution, and finding our own unique voices.
In December 2011, she and Jesse Hirsh founded the Academy of the Impossible, a community learning center in Toronto where people teach each other how to achieve their dreams through innovative artistic, technological, social and literacy programs.
Her many writing-related jobs have included:
- acquisitions editor for McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s English textbooks,
- editorial copyeditor at Now Magazine,
- editor/publisher of literary conga line Kiss Machine (for eight years),
- co-editor of Broken Pencil magazine, and
- translator of “action alerts” for press freedom organization CJFE/IFEX.
Emily holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She’s slowly working toward a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development at University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education with supervisor Jack Quarter. Her research is on how community-based writing groups can empower people who’ve been marginalized.
