Emma Claire Sweeney

Emma Claire Sweeney has won Arts Council, Royal Literary Fund and Escalator Awards, and has been shortlisted for several others, including the Asham, Wasafiri and Fish. Emma publishes arts features and pieces on disability for the likes of the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, Mslexia and The Times, and co-runs SomethingRhymed.com – a website on female literary friendship. She currently teaches creative writing at New York University, and has previously worked for Cambridge, City University’s Novel Studio and the OU. She is a fellow of Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory in Armenia and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in the USA, and has also held writing residencies at Camden Carers, Eastside Educational Trust, Circle of Misse and Sunnyside Rural Trust – which resulted in the publication of The Memoir Garden: a collection of poems from the words and experiences of adults with learning disabilities. Her debut novel, Owl Song at Dawn, which was inspired by her sister who has cerebral palsy and autism, was published by Legend Press in 2016. A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, which she is co-writing with her own friend, Emily Midorikawa, has come out in 2017 with Aurum Press in the UK and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the USA.