Emily Strasser’s first book, Half-Life of a Secret, traces her journey to reckon with the legacy of her grandfather’s work building nuclear weapons in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Catapult, Guernica, Colorado Review, and Gulf Coast, among others, and she was the presenter of the 2020 BBC podcast “The Bomb.” Her work has been honored by awards and fellowships including the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, the W. K. Rose Fellowship, the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Creative Writing, the McKnight Writing Fellowship, and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Emily is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.