Emily Urquhart

Emily Urquhart (born 1977) is a Canadian writer. She is most noted for her 2022 book Ordinary Wonder Tales, which was a shortlisted finalist for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Background
The daughter of artist Tony Urquhart and writer Jane Urquhart, she did her undergraduate education at Queen's University, and worked as a freelance writer and book reviewer before completing her Ph.D. in folklore studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Writing career
Urquhart's first book, Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, was published in 2015. A memoir of her experience giving birth to a daughter who was diagnosed with albinism, the book was shortlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction in 2016.

In 2020 she published The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, My Father and Me, a memoir of her childhood experiences learning about art from her father.

Ordinary Wonder Tales, a collection of essays about the intersection between memory and cultural folklore, was published in fall 2022.

Urquhart currently teaches creative writing at the University of Waterloo.