Emily Holmes Coleman, American poet and novelist, was born in 1899, in Oakland, California. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1920 and soon thereafter left for Paris where she worked as the society editor for the Paris Tribune. As an expatriate writer, Coleman continued to live in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.

Although Emily Coleman's papers reveal her to be a prolific writer, her only published works were her contributions to little magazines, such as transition and New Review, and her autobiographical novel, The Shutter of Snow (1930). She kept a close friendship with Djuna Barnes, Edwin Muir, Peggy Guggenheim, Beatrix Wright, and Antonia White.

From 1944 until her death the focus of Coleman's attention and activities was her religious life. She became involved with the Catholic left, developed friendships with Dorothy Day and Jacques and Raissa Maritain, and lived in a number of Catholic communities. At the time of her death in 1974, Coleman was being cared for by Catholic nuns at The Farm in Tivoli, New York.