About Em
Em Palughi is a Southern poet and writer from the Mobile area. Her work draws from ecopoetics and the confessional poets and considers grief, ecological loss, family, addiction, and Southern queerness. She is currently working on a manuscript that explores both climate change’s effect on the Gulf Coast and the death of her father.
Em holds a BA in Creative Writing from Goucher College and an MFA in Poetry from Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt, she was awarded the 2024 Kathryn Sedberry Prize for recognition outside the MFA and worked as a poetry and visual arts editor for the Nashville Review. She taught poetry workshops as an instructor of record and represented the MFA at conferences and other events.
She currently holds the position of Writing Fellow at The Curb Center for Art and Public Policy. In this role, she has designed and facilitated a writing workshop centered on grief for members of the greater Nashville community. She has also read at multiple events, including Host Publication’s AWP offsite reading, Poetics of Liberation, in Los Angeles.