Emily Willingham is a freelance science writer and author of Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis, published in September 2020 by Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, and The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship, A User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter, to be published in December 2021 by Basic Books. She holds a PhD in Biological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin.

Her work was published in Scientific American, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Knowable, Undark, Forbes, Slate, Grist, The Scientist, MIT Tech Review, American Scientist, The Scientist, Backpacker, Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, and in other local and regional publications.