Emily Yellin

Emily Yellin is a journalist, author, and producer. Her latest book, Nonviolent - A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love (Random House 2026), is a collaboration with civil rights movement leader Rev. James Lawson Jr. They worked together for five years to write his story, before he passed away in 2024 at the age of 95.

Emily is a longtime contributor to The New York Times, mostly writing about the South, race and women's issues. She has also written for Time, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Smithsonian magazine, and other publications. She is the author of two previous books: Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us (Simon & Schuster, 2009) and Our Mothers' War (Simon & Schuster 2004).

In 2018, Emily led a multimedia journalism project called Striking Voices, centered around in-depth video interviews with some of the Memphis sanitation workers who went on strike in 1968, and their wives, sons and daughters. She produced a 10-part video series called 1,300 Men: Memphis Strike '68, based on those interviews, in partnership with The Root, that was posted during the first four months of 2018, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation strike.

Born in White Plains, New York, Emily grew up in Memphis. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in English literature, and received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She has lived in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London, but now lives in Memphis.