Emily Hockaday is a poet and editor living in Queens. Her first full-length collection, Naming the Ghost, will be out with Cornerstone Press in November 2022. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Starting a Life (Finishing Line Press 2012), What We Love & Will Not Give Up (Dancing Girl Press 2014), Ophelia: A Botanist’s Guide (Zoo Cake Press 2015), Space on Earth (Grey Book Press 2019), and the forthcoming Beach Vocabulary (Red Bird Chaps). Her poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, as well as with the Poets of Queens and Parks & Points’ Wayfinding anthologies.

Emily is the recipient of a New York City Artists Corps grant and the winner of the Middle House Review Editors Prize. Her poems have been featured on RadioLab, with the performance series Emotive Fruition, in the Poets of Queens reading series, Line Break reading series, and in the Office Hours Fellows showcase events.

Woman in a Body is a collection of poems exploring chronic illness and its effect on the body and spirit. How do chronic fatigue and pain isolate a person? How can a body feel connected when contending with the obstacles of chronic illness? Woman in a Body looks to the natural world for answers while questioning what it is like to be any body on Earth. These poems ruminate on where bodies—human, plant, and animal—fit into their ecosystems, and what that means for a temporary human body struggling to thrive. The manuscript also considers the effects of chronic illness on family dynamics and mental health.

“Body on an Island,” published by Cold Mountain Review can be read here or listened to and “Body as Chemical Ecosystem” can be read here published under the name “Salt Marsh” by Parks & Points and in the Wayfinding anthology.

Please visit Emily’s Twitter and her website for more information.