EmElise Knapp (she/her) grew up asking her grandmother to share “puddleduck stories,” stories of great wisdom and fertile secrets passed down for generations to the women who are the first to wake, last to sleep. EmElise now writes these stories. Em is a neurodivergent screenwriter, playwright, and teaching artist with a passion for children’s media. She holds a Dramatic Writing MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Em was a Eugene O’Neill semi-finalist (2024) for her new work, The Octopus Girl, a play that explores a relationship through a New York City twelve-course tasting menu. Her screenplay, Colleen and the Misfit Scientists, was a finalist for the A.P. Sloan Foundation script competition (2024).
Most recently, she has been found fishing for Sevengill Broadnose sharks on a marine biologist’s vessel for research on her new daring screenplay, BITE…“Never turn your back on the ocean or on a scientist who has everything to lose.”