Emmanuella Hristova was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the Bay Area. She is the third daughter to Bulgarian parents who immigrated to California shortly before she was born. She began drawing at the ripe age of four, and studied the fine arts for five years in high school. There, she received many art accolades including a Congressional award for her piece Boy in Red in 2009. In 2015, she received her Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. She began writing poetry at age twenty-four when she was in graduate school. She earned her Master's in Education from the same alma mater in 2017. Emmanuella spent two years as an English teacher in Richmond, California. During that time, she self-published her first poetry collection: The Day My Kisses Tasted Like Disorder. Her poems have been published in For Women Who Roar Issue 2: Power, 365 Days of Covid, and She Rose Issue 3: The Goddess. Currently, she is writing her second novel and seeking a literary agent for the first. She speaks English, Bulgarian, Spanish and is now learning French. Visit her website www.ehristova.com for more info or follow her on Instagram: emmy_speaks