Em Mercer (they/them)

Em Mercer is a part-time Lecturer in Publishing (Education and Scholarship) at the University of Exeter, teaching on the MA Publishing. They come to the University from a publishing industry background, most recently as Editor and Publishing Director at Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing. At Wasafiri, they published issues on themes including abolitions, trans literary activism, writing the Windrush scandal, and reimagining education. Em is curious about and committed to developing best practice in literary publishing and literary academia, working towards making these fields more equitable and sustainable for students and workers.

Em’s postgraduate research was on phenomenologies of grief and the ‘untranslateable’ in the work of the contemporary Canadian poet Anne Carson, as part of the MA Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious at the University of Essex, and then supported by the AHRC-Funded ‘Memories of Fiction’ project at the University of Roehampton. Their BA was in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.

They continue to work as a freelance editor alongside their teaching role, across creative and academic genres but specialising in poetry.