Emily Pohl-Weary has been called “a shining example of a writer who has made a difference in her community through mentorship.” She’s an award-winning author, editor, arts educator and creative writing professor. 

She has published seven books, most recently Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl (YA fantasy, 2013) and Ghost Sick (poetry about tragedy and resilience in downtown Toronto, 2015). Previous novels include Strange Times at Western High (middle-grade mystery) and A Girl Like Sugar (ghost love story). She also co-authored the Hugo Award-winning Better to Have Loved, the memoirs of her gender-bending grandmother Judith Merril, who wrote and edited science fiction in 1950s New York City. 

Her anthology Girls Who Bite Back compiled writing and art by 34 contributors who examined pop culture examples of superwomen and created new fictional heroes. She has written comics and book reviews, published a literary magazine and acquired content for high school English textbooks. For two decades, she led regular community writing programs for street-involved youth, men living in transitional housing, and women in prison. 

Emily has a PhD in adult education from the University of Toronto. For her dissertation, she researched the benefits of community-based writing groups and egalitarian writing pedagogies. She is an assistant professor in the UBC School of Creative Writing, where she teaches writing for young readers and speculative fiction.