Emily Strelow has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Washington in Seattle and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. Her debut novel, The Wild Birds, was published March of 2018 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Foreword Indies Award. Emily was born and raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley but has lived all over the West. For the last fifteen years she combined teaching writing with doing seasonal avian field biology. While doing field jobs she camped and wrote in remote areas in the desert, mountains and by the ocean. She is a mother of two boys, naturalist, conservation storyteller, and author living in Portland, Oregon.