Emily Beyda Books in Order

Emily Beyda grew up in Los Angeles, and writing seems to have arrived early for her. As a child, she lived next door to Eve Babitz, who encouraged her to write things down as soon as she could hold a pen. Her parents still have some of those homemade childhood novels, complete with hand-drawn covers, which tells you a lot about how long she has been turning observation into story.

She was making books before she was old enough to be self-conscious about them.

Beyda later studied comparative literature at New York University and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from Texas State University. Before her fiction reached bookstores, she built a working writer's life the practical way, through assignments, deadlines, and a lot of varied prose. In her early twenties she wrote for food publications and online magazines, then became a familiar voice at The Austin Chronicle, where she covered restaurants and food news and wrote the advice column Dear Glutton.

That journalism work matters when you read her fiction. She likes looking past surfaces, whether the subject is a plate of food, a city, or the strange stories people tell about themselves. On her own site, she describes her reporting as a way of exploring the hidden parts of the world, and that curiosity carries over into the mood and detail of her novels.

Her path into fiction was less a dramatic career change than a longer version of what she had been doing all along. Beyda has said writing was always part of how she processed the world, and she has pointed to teachers and mentors such as Ivy Pochoda, David Gates, Jennifer duBois, and Karen Russell as important influences. In 2020, those years of practice became her published debut, The Body Double.

It was a very Los Angeles debut.

The Body Double follows a young woman from a fading movie theater job into a bizarre offer: move to Los Angeles and impersonate the reclusive celebrity Rosanna Feld. The setup lets Beyda dig into fame, loneliness, performance, and the way a public image can swallow a private self. Readers who respond to the book tend to like its eerie Hollywood atmosphere, its slow-burn tension, and its interest in doubles, masks, and control rather than neat, puzzle-box thrills.

Those interests line up with her nonfiction, too. Across food writing, criticism, interviews, and brand copy, Beyda keeps returning to appetite, style, image, and the gap between how things look and how they feel from the inside. She has also done copywriting and editorial work for fashion, jewelry, wellness, and design clients, which fits a writer who notices both the big story and the telling detail.

Now based in Los Angeles again, Beyda still works across forms. She has spoken about following what brings joy in the work instead of chasing perfection, which feels like a useful key to her career so far: curious, flexible, and interested in the people behind the performance.