Collections
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Gay Girl Prayers | 2024 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Oh Honey | 2017 | Buy |
| Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead | 2021 | Buy |
| Interesting Facts About Space | 2023 | Buy |
| We Could Be Rats | 2025 | Buy |
| Is This a Cry for Help? | 2026 | Buy |
Emily R. Austin grew up in Ontario and studied English literature and library science at Western University. She lives in Ottawa and has received writing grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her fiction tends to feature queer protagonists dealing with mental health, social anxiety, and the kind of situations that are both genuinely distressing and quietly funny.
Her breakthrough came with Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead (2021), which follows Gilda, a gay atheist who accidentally gets hired at a Catholic church and becomes obsessed with the fate of the previous secretary. The novel balances dark humor with a real sympathy for characters who struggle to tell the truth or ask for help.
Her second novel, Interesting Facts About Space (2024), follows Enid, a neurodivergent lesbian who uses astronomy facts as a way of communicating with people she cares about. That same year, Austin published Gay Girl Prayers with Brick Books, a poetry collection that rewrites Catholic prayers and biblical passages to speak to queer, feminist, and trans readers.