Emily McGowan

Biography

Emily McGowan teaches courses related to English and writing. Her interests include 20th-century literature, rhetoric, German detective novels, Southern Gothic and speculative fiction, Old Hollywood, folk music, and fashion history. An Army brat with Bible-belt ancestry, she resonates with Flannery O’Connor’s claim that the South is “Christ-haunted” and has a passion for writing stories that encourage readers to love their neighbor as themselves.

A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Emily has hands-on experience with the publishing process and is currently querying her M.F.A. thesis — a dystopian novel titled Protogeist — to literary agents. She has published with Causeway Lit and Atwood Magazine. She has also volunteered on staff with the Savannah Book Festival since 2021 and participated in the 2024 Women’s Caucus at the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). She believes literary citizenship is a must. Since 2017, she has professionally edited projects ranging from Ph.D. dissertations to feature films.

She is the writer-producer of “August,” a WWII homefront film about a German POW in rural Georgia. In the 2023-2024 festival season, August was an official selection for the Independent Shorts Awards (Best Student Short), the Macon Film Festival (Best Student Short), the Bay International Film Festival (Best Picture Winner), the Madrid Indie Film Festival, the Liber Films International Festival, the Richmond International Film Festival, the Santa Barbara Indie Film Fest, and the Red Movie Awards in Reims, France. She has already submitted her next script, “No Solicitation,” to festivals.

She and her husband, Eli (her co-screenwriter, director extraordinaire, and college sweetheart), have been married for 10 years and reside with their two daughters in Dayton, Tennessee.