Emily Maloney is the author of COST OF LIVING, an essay collection from Henry Holt, about her transformation from patient into EMT and in the pharmaceutical world, set against the backdrop of the failure of the American healthcare system. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Glamour, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Atlantic, the North American Review, and the American Journal of Nursing. She has also worked as a dog groomer, pastry chef, general contractor, tile setter, catalog model, and has sold her ceramics at art fairs. She has nonverbal learning disability, a neurologically-based developmental disability similar to autism. Her essay, “Cost of Living,” which originally appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, was selected for Best American Essays 2017, edited by Leslie Jamison. Emily is also a MacDowell Fellow (17, 18), a 2019 Illinois Arts Council Fellow, and a 2015 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh MFA program.