Emma Copley Eisenberg

Fat Swim

Short Story, 2026

Description forthcoming…

Housemates

Fiction, 2024

“A wise, beautiful and gorgeously gay exploration of America, art, and the rugged vast country that is love itself.” —Sarah Thankam Mathews

Four housemates, looking for a fifth, the ad read. Queer preferred (we all are).

This is how Bernie, a film photographer, meets writer Leah, and from opposite sides of a thin bedroom wall in West Philadelphia the two become closer than they ever could have imagined. When Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie on a road trip to her former professor’s home in rural Pennsylvania to settle a complicated inheritance, what ensues is an unexpected road trip into the heart of America as the duo try to make sense of the times they are living in – falling in love with each other and rediscovering the power of making art along the way.

With humor, warmth, and beautifully observed characters, and told through the lens of two generations of queer creatives reflecting on questions of “how should a person be?”, Housemates is a glorious celebration of creativity, body liberation, chosen family–and of finding your place in an uncertain world.

The Third Rainbow Girl

Nonfiction, 2021

“Uniquely thoughtful and introspective. The insights into human nature are the real gritty, good stuff you get from reading a masterful work of journalism like this one.”  —NPR

A stunning, complex narrative about the fractured legacy of a decades-old double murder in rural West Virginia — and the writer determined to put the pieces back together. In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the “Rainbow Murders” though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. As time passed, the truth seemed to slip away, and the investigation itself inflicted its own traumas — turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming the fears of violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries.

In The Third Rainbow Girl, Emma Copley Eisenberg uses the Rainbow Murders case as a starting point for a thought-provoking tale of an Appalachian community bound by the false stories that have been told about it. Weaving in experiences from her own years spent living in Pocahontas County, she follows the threads of this crime through the complex history of Appalachia, revealing how this mysterious murder has loomed over all those affected for generations, shaping their fears, fates, and desires. Beautifully written and brutally honest, The Third Rainbow Girl presents a searing and wide-ranging portrait of America — divided by gender and class, and haunted by its own violence.