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About the Author

Emily Nemens

Emily Nemens is the author of the novels Clutch (Tin House/Zando, 2026), and The Cactus League (FSG, 2020), both of which were NYT Book Review Editor's Choice selections. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, Story, Zyzzyva, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Nemens spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading the Paris Review and serving as coeditor and prose editor of the Southern Review. She teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College and lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog.

2026

Emily Nemens’s Clutch is a tour de force, hailed as “powerful”(NPR), “a compulsive page-turner” (The Atlantic), and “White Lotus with more sincerity and heart” (LA Times). “I rooted for these women, loved them. . . . What I wouldn’t give to know that my friends and I will end up OK, to have someone with Nemens’s feral intelligence mapping our paths.” —Joumana Khatib, The New York Times

  1. Emily Nemens on midlife, friendship and her new novel

    Los Angeles Times

  2. 'Clutch' tells the story of 5 women and their lifelong friendship

    NPR

  3. For This College Friend Group, Midlife Has Entered the Chat

    The New York Times Book Review

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