About

Emily Lake Hansen (she/her) is a first-year Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. She is the author of the poetry collection Home and Other Duty Stations (Kelsay Books) as well as two chapbooks: The Way the Body Had to Travel (dancing girl press) and Pharaoh’s Daughter Keeps a Diary (forthcoming from Kissing Dynamite Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pleaides, 32 Poems, OxMag, CALYX, So to Speak, SWWIM, Atticus Review, and Up the Staircase Quarterly among others. A recent finalist for the Black River Chapbook Competition, the C&R Press Poetry Prize, and the Pinch’s Page Prize for Nonfiction, Emily’s creative work focuses on themes of home and identity as well as the overlaps between personal, ecological, and generational traumas.

Emily has over ten years of experience teaching first-year composition and creative writing at a variety of higher education institions across Georgia, mostly recently at her undergraduate alma mater Agnes Scott College, and also worked as private learning specialist for students with disabilities for five years. Emily holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Georgia College and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Georgia State University where she completed dual dissertations in poetry and creative non-fiction and was a founding editor for Beyond Bars, a literary journal co-created with writers from Philips State Prison. In addition to her creative work, Emily has scholarly interests in disability and fat studies and currently serves as a member of Board of Directors at Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School.

Books

Home and Other Duty Stations - Kelsay Books [Review] - 2020
[Also available on Amazon]

The Way the Body Had To Travel - Dancing Girl Press [Review] - 2014

Selected Publications

Poems

• “Safety” SWWIM.
• “Contrapuntal Written to Take Up Less Space” CALYX.
• “A Man on the Street Says I Must Be Fine Because I’m Clearly Not Skipping Any Meals” Burrow Press Review.
• “WOMEN WITHOUT A COUNTRY” Passangers Journal.
• “Paradise” and “Lifeguarding” Pleiades.
• “Bird” ONE Art.
• “Ode to Lizzo” Up the Staircase Quarterly.
• “Concerning the results of your ACE screening” Limp Wrist.
• “If I have a home, it’s been on fire for decades” Poetry Online.
• “Latrophobia (Induced by Internalized Fatphobia) So to Speak.
• “Change of Address” and “The Last Birthday Party” ONE Art.
• “My male professor asks haven’t women been writing about this for decades already?” Glass: A Journal of Poetry.
• “Pastoral in Quarantine” Atticus Review.
• “Try something different this time” Birdcoat Quarterly.
• “Luxury” HOBART.
• “How to explain coronavirus to your children” The Shore.
• “My Therpist Says When There’s Trauma, the Body Keeps the Score” Exhume.
• “Pharaoh’s Daughter Keeps a Diary” Kissing Dynamite.
• “Desert Vacation” Atticus Review.
• “Pharaoh’s Daughter Keeps a Diary” Rust + Moth.
• “Rainy Season” Midway Journal.
• “Mirage” SWWIM.
• “Brat in the Garden of Eden” 8 Poems.
• “The Escape Artist.” Stirring: A Literary Collective.

Essays & Reviews

• “Heterochromia” HerStry.
• “American Pastoral for the 21st Century” Still: The Journal.
• “A History of the Body as Told Through Reality Television” So to Speak.
• “The Lake’s Only Daughter” The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
• “A Review of Lisa Fay Coutley’s Tether” The Adroit Journal.
• “Ambivalence” HOBART.
• “On ‘My Mother as Penelope’.” Structure and Style.

Awards and Nominations

• Finalist/Shortlisted - 2023 C&R Press Poetry Award
• Finalist - 2023 Breakthrough Chapbook Contest, Frontier Poetry
• Finalist - Spring 2022 Black River Chapbook Competition, Black Lawarance Press
• Finalit - Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award
• Honorable Mention - Limp Wrist Glittler Bomb Award
• Finalist - Page Prize in Creative NonFiction
• Semi-Finalist - Button Poetry Chapbook Contest 2022
• Semi-Finalist - Tomaz Salamun Prize
• Semi-Finalist - Sundress Publications Open Reading 2021.
• Nominee - Georgia Author of the Year Awards 2021
• Nominee - “Best of the Net 2019” Atticus Review.
• Third Prize - “2019 Atticus Review Poetry Contest” Atticus Review.
• Nominee - “Best of the Net 2018” Nightjar Review.