Emily Claudette Freeman
About Claudette
About Claudette
A life spent listening for what
people carry but do not always say.
A life spent listening for what people carry but
do not always say.
Emily “Claudette” Freeman is an author, playwright, speaker, facilitator, screenwriter,
literary strategist, and longtime radio professional whose creative life has been shaped
by the front-porch language of the South, the spiritual heat of the Black church, and an
instinct for the emotional truth living underneath conversation.
She has been writing since adolescence, when an English teacher recognized her gift and introduced her to the work of James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston. That early invitation into Black literary voice became part of a much longer journey through radio, theatre, fiction, spiritual writing, workshops, and the rooms where story becomes witness.
Over the years, Claudette has learned that the stories people tell, and the ones they hold back are rarely separate. Her work sits in that tender space between what is spoken and what is implied, between the memory that comforts and the memory that haunts. Whether she is writing a play, leading a retreat, or coaching another writer through a difficult draft, she returns to the same question: what is the truth beneath the conversation, and what would it cost someone to say it out loud?
Emily “Claudette” Freeman is an author, playwright, speaker, facilitator, screenwriter,
literary strategist, and longtime radio professional whose creative life has been shaped
by the front-porch language of the South, the spiritual heat of the Black church, and an
instinct for the emotional truth living underneath conversation.
She has been writing since adolescence, when an English teacher recognized her gift and introduced
her to the work of James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston. That early invitation into Black literary voice
became part of a much longer journey through radio, theatre, fiction, spiritual writing, workshops, and
the rooms where story becomes witness.
Over the years, Claudette has learned that the stories people tell — and the ones they hold back — are
rarely separate. Her work sits in that tender space between what is spoken and what is implied,
between the memory that comforts and the memory that haunts. Whether she is writing a play, leading
a retreat, or coaching another writer through a difficult draft, she returns to the same question: what is
the truth beneath the conversation, and what would it cost someone to say it out loud?
Radio Years
The ear came
before the stage
The ear came
before the stage
Radio Years
The ear came
before the stage
Claudette spent roughly 24 years in South Florida radio. That world sharpened an ear already tuned to cadence, subtext, personality, conflict, timing, testimony, and the way people reveal themselves when they believe they are simply talking. Her broadcast career included programming, production, promotions, management, on-air work, documentary and community-centered storytelling.
Radio taught her to listen for the pause that carries more than the sentence, the laugh that arrives a beat too late, the sigh that says what words cannot. She learned how voice works, not just the sound of it, but the intention behind it, and how a single story, placed in the right context, can shift a community’s sense of itself. Those years also gave her a practical fluency in narrative pacing, audience attention, and the discipline of showing up with something meaningful to say, again and again, on deadline.
That listening life still lives inside her writing. Her characters tend to stand at the edge of truth. Families negotiate silence and inheritance. Women recover pieces of themselves. Fathers and daughters wrestle with absence. Communities remember what history tried to bury. Faith sits in the room without making every answer easy.
Theatre
A playwright shaped by Black literary lineage
Her theatre journey includes two consecutive placements in Quest Theatre’s Loften Mitchell New Playwrights’ Festival; participation in the Miami Book Fair International WRITE IN OUR MIDST program; apprenticeship to Ntozake Shange during the Atlantic Center for the Arts Masters Residency Program; and a commission from the Miami Sports & Exhibition Authority to write From the Porch, a Black history production starring Danny Glover.
Her plays and staged works have been selected, read, produced, or developed through organizations including Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company, the Women’s Theatre Festival of Memphis, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, the Chattanooga Black Arts and Ideas Festival, the National Black Theatre Festival Readers Series, and universities. The Slumber Party was staged at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2026.
Claudette’s plays are rooted in the belief that theatre is a communal act of bearing witness. She writes with an ear for the music of everyday speech, the rituals of Black family life, and the spiritual undertow that runs beneath even the most ordinary exchanges. Her work invites audiences to recognize themselves in characters who are complicated, funny, wounded, resilient, and unforgettably human.
“Her characters tend to
stand at the edge of
truth.”
“Her characters tend to
stand at the edge of
truth.”
Published Work
The page is just as
alive
Published Work
The page is just as
alive
Claudette’s published work spans fiction, spiritual nonfiction, journals, devotionals, collective works, and guided reflection, all reflecting a writer interested in story and the interior lives people carry into it.
Her books do not lecture. They invite. They ask questions. They make room for the reader’s own memory and longing. Whether she is writing a novel, a devotional, or a guided journal, she approaches the page as a sacred threshold, a place where the private self meets the larger story of family, faith, culture, and time.
As a literary strategist, she also helps other writers and organizations shape their stories with clarity and courage. She understands that writing is not only art; it is also architecture. Structure, voice, audience, and intention must all work together so the message lands with the force it deserves.
Gathering
The room
becomes the work
Gathering
The room
becomes the work
Claudette is a sought-after speaker and facilitator who brings the same depth she brings to the page into the room. She has led workshops, retreats, writing intensives, and conversations for faith communities, arts organizations, universities, and private gatherings always with an eye toward what happens when people are given permission to tell the truth.
Her facilitation is gentle but not soft. She knows how to hold silence, how to ask the next question, and how to create a container where participants feel safe enough to risk honesty. She believes that creativity is not reserved for a chosen few; it is a human inheritance that often needs only a little encouragement, a little structure, and a witness, to come forward.
Whether she is speaking from a stage, guiding a small group through a writing prompt, or consulting on a creative project, her aim is the same: to help people locate their voice, trust their story, and offer it to the world with integrity.
This Season
Where ECF is now
This season of ECF places Claudette’s creative work at the center: plays, books, speaking, writing rooms, retreats, audio, Substack, paper, and snail mail.
Coaching and editing remain part of the skill behind the work, while the public invitation is broader: read, listen, gather, write, experience, produce, and stay
connected.
She is building a body of work that moves across forms without losing its center.
The same questions
that animate her plays,
Who are we becoming?
What do we owe the past?
How do we speak theunspeakable with love?
Also animate her essays, her newsletters, her retreats, and her conversations
with other makers.
This season of ECF places Claudette’s creative work at the center: plays, books, speaking, writing rooms,
retreats, audio, Substack, paper, and snail mail.
Coaching and editing remain part of the skill behind the
work, while the public invitation is broader: read, listen, gather, write, experience, produce, and stay
connected.
She is building a body of work that moves across forms without losing its center. The same questions that animate her plays.
Who are we becoming?
What do we owe the past?
How do we speak the
unspeakable with love?
Also animate her essays, her newsletters, her retreats, and her conversations
with other makers.
A simple way to say it
Claudette is a multi-faceted, ever-evolving story, creating words
that live, dance, move, inspire, and transform, and inviting others
to do the same.
Claudette is a multi-faceted, ever-evolving story, creating words that live, dance, move, inspire, and transform, and inviting others to do the same.
Emily Claudette Freeman
Author • Playwright • Speaker • Facilitator • Keeper of Sacred Stories
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© 2026 Emily Claudette Freeman. All rights reserved.
Words that live, dance, move, inspire, and transform.