After losing her mother as a child, Essmaker’s story took her on a journey from grief and powerlessness to finding a sense of agency and taking her place in the world.

Through her writing, she explores grief, loss, and the in between, bearing witness to the empty, liminal spaces of the human experience with curiosity: What happens when we must let go, transition, reinvent, or begin again?

No stranger to reinvention, Essmaker returned to graduate school in her early forties to fulfill a lifelong dream of earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, graduating from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

“Blue,” her first published essay about early mother loss, appeared in Roxane Gay’s newsletter, The Audacity, as part of the Emerging Writer Essay Series. In 2023, she was a finalist for the Sewanee Review Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction Contest judged by Alexander Chee.

Essmaker recently created her Empty Space newsletter on Substack as a place to explore grief, loss, and the in between. Join her there to bear witness to the empty spaces of the human experience with curiosity: What happens when we must let go, transition, reinvent, or begin again?

Previously, Essmaker cofounded and served as editor-in-chief of The Great Discontent magazine, a multimedia publication of long-form interviews with notable creators. During her time with the magazine, Essmaker interviewed hundreds of creatives, including Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Sharon Van Etten, Tavi Gevinson, Leon Bridges, Krista Tippett, and many more.

In 2017, Essmaker transitioned out of The Great Discontent magazine and started her own business as a certified life coach helping creative professionals achieve their goals. Essmaker has written for outlets serving the creative community, including Adobe's 99U and Working Not Working Magazine, and spoken around the world, teaching at companies including Vice UK and lecturing at Parsons. She has been featured in Forbes, Print, and Brooklyn Mag’s 100 Most Influential People.

In her early twenties, Essmaker earned a Bachelor's of Social Work from Wayne State University in Detroit and spent over a decade working at a shelter and transitional living program for unhoused young people in her hometown.

Essmaker grew up in rural Michigan, spent her thirties in New York City, and now splits her time between the woods of New Hampshire and the tree-lined streets of her Jersey City neighborhood where she and her partner raise their two young boys.