Emma with short purple hair & red circular glasses in a white button-down against a red brick wall.
Emma’s dog, Broccoli.
Emma Goldman-Sherman is a Neuro-Affirming and Trauma-Informed Audhd Coach who specializes in helping all kinds of people learn to trust themselves.
Emma was diagnosed Autistic at age 55 (and 10 months) and with ADHD at 58. With lived experience of a lifetime of searching for answers, they began coaching as a certified holistic health counselor in the 2000s specializing in gluten-free diets. They expanded to somatic and IFS-informed coaching over time.
Having struggled with and healed their cPTSD, anxiety and depression, they have completed various courses, certificates and training toward expanding their coaching practice.
They are proud of their certificate from IACT at AANE.org to work with neurodivergent adults of all genders/expressions and their families. Emma offers tools for self-regulation and ease. Become less reactive and more self aware. Emma works to help people create healthier and happier lives. If you are struggling to manage coping mechanisms and be more present, Emma will work with you to help you figure out what works for you.
While Emma is in grateful remission for 5 autoimmune diseases, some of these caused suffering and struggle for 40 years. They have a personal and deep understanding of chronic illness, spoonie life, and disability in an ableist culture. Emma can work with you to heal cultural and family belief systems that can keep us rooted in a struggle full of self-sabotage, internalized oppression and ableism.
All of our work is done through a non-pathologizing lens. This means I am non-judgmental and approach your struggles and conflicts as real and human.
Emma is also a playwright, poet, dramaturg and writing coach. They teach for the Dramatists Guild Institute, and they’ve taught at the University of Iowa, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Alliance of Jewish Theatres, New York Writers Workshop, and many other places. They founded and worked as the Resident Dramaturg for the 29th Street Playwrights Collective and the WriteNow Workshop from 2015 - 2021. Before that they taught writing workshops out of their home in New York City. Emma still offers classes & workshops from home via Zoom.
As a playwright, Emma's work has been produced on 4 continents. Their plays have been finalists at BAPF, Waterworks, Unicorn (3x), Campfire, Cutting Ball’s Risk is This Festival (3x), Henley Rose and Bridge Initiative’s Bechdel Test. Other plays have been semifinalists with The O’Neill and the JPP.
Their plays have been seen at Golden Thread, The Tank, The Wild Project, The Unesco Literary Festival in New Zealand, Dixon Place, New Ohio, Urban Stages and many other places and published with Smith & Kraus, Applause, Brooklyn Publishers and Next Stage Press.
Emma earned their MFA from the University of Iowa where they received 3 Norman Felton Awards and the Richard Maibaum Award for plays addressing social justice (Antigone's Sister) and the Jane Chambers Award (Perfect Women, now published by Next Stage Press).
Emma’s play, Abraham’s Daughters, about Palestine set during the first Intifada based on their research and documentation of human rights abuses is available for free as a podcast here. Abraham’s Daughters was a finalist for WATERWORKS, The Henley Rose, RISK IS THIS and UNICORN.
Their poems and flash are published in various journals online and in print. Toyon is translating “Dear Palestine,” into Arabic for publication in 2025. Gigantic Sequins awarded “Minotaur in the Backyard” first prize. It will be published in June. O To Be a Child on the Island of Inchkeith in Poetry Catalog. Two Poems in Anti-Heroin Chic. Third Estate Art has published Two Poems. You can read, Remembering the Concubine at Writers Resist and The Weat of Bings, in the Bangalore Review.
Fish Publishing awarded 3rd Place for Emma’s Flash Fiction piece: Because it is Impossible and Yet
“Different, I didn’t know why” was the 3rd place selection for Open Minds Quarterly’s 21st Annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest and is now reprinted HERE in the Last Stanza Anthology. “The Stocked Pond” will be in the next Last Stanza Anthology, link tba.
You can hear Emma’s work online as podcasts at playingonair.org and theparsnipship.com and now at The Ugly Radio
Sad Girls Club Literary Blog published The Witch HERE and 3 Fantasies about my Mother HERE. Zoetic Press NonBinary Review : The Roundworm Shares the News.
Watch OUT OF ILLNESS COMES ART
Listen to LIVING IN YOUR POWER on First Online with Fran:
Listen to OUT OF GRIEF COMES ART
Emma has received residencies at Millay, Ragdale and twice at WordBridge where they also worked as a dramaturg.
FUKT, the play that inspired Emma to create Brave Space, had a very successful run in NYC at the Tank in 2022. You can read more about it here: At Show-Score.com
Emma is a proud member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatists Guild. More info and their plays are available at New Play Exchange.
Emma is thrilled to be able to offer Coaching & Brave Space to support all kinds of creatives and those who want to live more creatively!