Emma Ensley | March 9th-March 23rd

We are happy to welcome Emma Ensley to the residency this March! Emma published her debut short story collection in 2025, and during her time at the residency she will be working on a surreal dark comedy novel that follows a student named Fern through her first year of college.

Fern does two things her first week of college: accidentally enrolls in a seminar on Dante’s Inferno and starts taking birth control pills. As campus life grows increasingly disorienting, she clings to her one source of stability–her former therapist, a woman in her early twenties who lacks boundaries and answers Fern’s texts at all hours. The novel is structured around Dante’s nine circles of hell, with the therapist serving as a Virgil figure, guiding (and misguiding) Fern deeper into each circle—lust, gluttony, wrath, and beyond.

 

Save the Date for Emma’s community event
Held on the evening of Thursday, March 19th
Join Emma for a reading centered around the nine circles of hell. Nine readers will each be assigned one of Dante’s circles as a theme and share a piece that responds to it. Emma will read from her novel in progress, and other readers will  pull from a variety of sources and genres.

 

Artist Statement:
My work is rooted in the two places I grew up: North Georgia and on the internet. Both taught me about performance, about the gap between who we are and who we pretend to be, and about the ways we seek connection and find community. I’m drawn to the weirdness of coming-of-age. Not the grand moments, but the small, humiliating, hypnotic ones. My debut short story collection, The Computer Room, explored this through message boards, dive bars, roadside attractions, and fan fiction forums. I’m excited to carry these same obsessions into a novel, where the performance can unravel more slowly.