I write.

I primarily write creative non-fiction, articles, and essays. My creative work is often experimental/hybrid genre. My articles and essays include writing for The Santa Fe New Mexican.

My memoir, This is What it Sounds Like, is about my childhood in the 1980s and early 1990s, and my mother's eventual death from complications of HIV/AIDS in 1993. I am currently seeking representation to publish this work.

Most recently, I was interviewed about my teaching and writing in Santa Fe Magazine. The article isn’t available in its entirety online, but you can either purchase an issue on their website or contact me via my contact form below.

Advanced Praise for This is What it Sounds Like

“Emily Stern’s extraordinary memoir, ‘This Is What It Sounds Like’ evokes an era of drugs, sex, suicide, abuse, music, and the first awareness of HIV/AID’s in the ‘80’s through Stern’s powerful and vulnerable voice as an adolescent/teenager. It’s a masterpiece of writing without embellishment, both hypnotic and heartbreaking. This is one book you won’t stop reading. Unforgettable and necessary!”

— Meg Tuite

Author of The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, Rat Bohemia, and co-producer of UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP.

“Emily’s acute telling of her mother’s unresolved life, brings the reader to the heat of 1980’s Bohemian Chicago when freedom and chaos easily became confused. Those who lived had time to sort things out, the others left us behind to do their work. ‘This Is What It Sounds Like’ by Emily Stern is an expression of that deep kind of love where we face the conflicts our most adored were unable to confront. Readers will be enriched by the result.”

— Sarah Schulman

Author of Bound By Blue

“At once heartbreaking and exhilarating, vulnerable and wise, Emily Stern’s debut memoir excavates layers of personal, familial, and societal trauma with raw candor. Stern conjures the violence and splendor of growing up wild and wanting in a 1980s/’90s landscape of Reagan and rage, hair dye and heartache, Doc Martens and doctor’s visits. By illuminating the intimacy of brutality with a casual intensity, ‘This Is What It Sounds Like’ shows us the dangerous route to compassion.”

— Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Author of The End of San Francisco

Between Certain Death and a Possible Future

Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis

My piece To Make a Whore of is included in this 2022 Lambda nominated anthology from Arsenal Pulp Press, edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. This piece is an excerpt from my memoir This is What it Sounds Like about growing up the midwest (Chicago & Indiana) in the 80’s and 90’s and my mother’s death from complications with HIV/AIDS in 1993.

Disability Justice from A to Z

A Coloring Book for Our Communities

I was honored and excited to be a part of this incredible book from Sins Invalid. “Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized.”

I made the art for the letter “U” which stands for “Unashamed”, “Universal Healthcare” and “Unity”.

Getting on the Side of Justice

Santa Fe New Mexican Op-Ed

I wrote this op-ed for the Santa Fe New Mexican about getting on the side of justice and the removal of colonial structures and memorials.

Publications