Emily Jalloul is a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and editor. Her first manuscript, Wasp & Orchid, explores the effects of intergenerational trauma among the Appalachian women in her family. Wasp & Orchid was shortlisted for the 2024 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize and is a current finalist for the YesYesBooks Poetry Open Reading Selection. 

From 2020-2022, Jalloul was the Chief Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. She also served as a contributing editor for Joy Harjo’s When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, which was the first comprehensive anthology of its kind, receiving an Oprah selection. Jalloul was also the Associate Editor for Rebecca Gayle Howell & Ashley M. Jones’ What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People, which was the first major anthology of labor writing in nearly a century and received best book of the year notice from outlets like Ms. magazine, Poets & Writers, and Bitter Southerner, and named the Foreword INDIES Gold anthology of the year.

Jalloul holds an MFA from Florida International University and the PhD from the University of Tennessee. She is currently working on a poetry collection that explores the language roots and cultural folklore of her paternal Arabic ancestry. Her new writing regularly appears in venues like Arkansas International, American Literary Review, and Oxford American.