Emily Strasser

Emily Strasser is the author of the forthcoming memoir Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History, which explores the toxic legacy of secrecy through two lenses: the figure of her grandfather, a deeply troubled nuclear chemist who worked in a secret lab enriching uranium for the world’s first atomic bomb, and the city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, built in secret for the sole purpose of developing the bomb.  She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Catapult, Guernica,The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Ploughshares, where she won the Emerging Writers Contest. Among her many other awards and honors are fellowships from Vassar College and Colgate University. Emily lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.