Emily Jon Tobias is an American author and poet. She is an award-winning writer whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, along with other honorable mentions, and has been featured in various literary journals and magazines including Santa Clara Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Big Muddy, Talking River Review, Peauxdunque Review, and elsewhere. MONARCH: STORIES (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) is her debut collection, winner of the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards, finalist for the 2024 American Book Fest Fiction Awards for a short story collection, and honored as a distinguished favorite in the 2024 NYC Big Book Award. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University Oregon, and in 2024, she was accepted as a mentor for the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program. Midwestern-raised, she now lives and writes on the coast of Southern California.