Emily Wallis Hughes grew up in Agua Caliente, California, a small town in the Sonoma Valley. my friend Now, Hughes's second full-length book of poems, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil in spring 2027. Her first book, Sugar Factory, was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2019. Ilya Kaminsky noted that Sugar Factory was "absolutely gorgeous lyric fire; one of the subtlest expressions of music I have read this year." Spanish translations of Hughes's poems have been published in Buenos Aires Poetry and Perfil, a widely circulated newspaper in Argentina. Poems from my friend Now, have been published in Always Crashing, The American Poetry Review, Conduit, Cordella Magazine, Edible Jersey, Luna Luna Magazine, and Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. Since 2010, Emily has been in remission from Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. She is a Lecturer in the undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Rutgers–New Brunswick. A 2026 New York State Council on the Arts Grantee, Emily lives in Astoria, Queens, New York, just a twenty-minute walk from where her mother lived as a child in Jackson Heights. Hughes is the Editorial Director and Books Editor of Fence Magazine, Inc., collaboratively leading the small not-for-profit independent publisher of the Fence Books and Fence magazine.