Emma Goldman-Sherman
Playwright, PlayPenn Teaching Artist
Emma Goldman-Sherman (they) believes in the power of theatre to confer agency and healing on audiences. Emma is an autistic, trans/enbee, queer, feminist playwright and poet living in New York City. Their work has been finalisted at BAPF, Unicorn (x3), Waterworks, Risk is This at Cutting Ball (x3), Campfire, Bechdel, and Henley Rose. They have also been a semifinalist for the Jewish Plays Project and the O'Neill.
You can hear their work as podcasts at PlayingonAir.org and TheParsnipShip.com
Produced on 4 continents, their work has been seen at Golden Thread, WP Theatre, New Georges, UNESCO's City of Literature Festival in Dunedin (NZ), EST/LA, Dixon Place, The Philadelphia Women's Theatre Festival, The New Ohio, Manhattan Theatre Source, All Out Arts at CSV, Circle Rep Lab, Guild Hall, Theatre Row, Downstairs at the West Bank, The Chain, New Circle Theatre Co, The Wild Project, Capital Fringe, Alumnae Theatre Toronto (CN), Short + Sweet Gold Coast and Sydney (AU), Seoul (Korea), Sasebo (Japan), Renegade N.O.W. Festival, Union Theological Seminary, The Museum of Jewish Heritage, Yiddishe Folksbiene Theatre, Greenbriar Valley Theatre, Canal Cafe Theatre (London), Camilla's, The Culture Project, and others.
Emma's plays are published by Brooklyn Publishers, Next Stage Press, Smith & Kraus and Applause. They are also a published poet with work in a variety of literary magazines and forthcoming in Toyon (translated into Arabic), Gigantic Sequins, and Best Microfictions of 2025.
They earned an MFA from the University of Iowa where they received the Jane Chambers Award, 3 Norman Felton Awards, and the Richard Maibaum Fellowship for plays addressing social justice. Their work has been supported by several grants from LMCC and the Puffin Foundation, residencies at Millay, Ragdale and twice at WordBridge where they returned as a dramaturg.
Emma has taught and been a dramaturg at the Great Plains Theatre Conference and the Resident Dramaturg at 29th Street Playwrights Collective where they ran the Write Now Workshop.
Currently Emma offers http://www.BraveSpace.online for writers and artists of all genres. Emma writes weekly on creativity and wholeness at