Riley Yaxley is most often a dinner party host, a fishkeeper, a beach rat, a flâneuse, a glutton, a dancer, a delinquent daughter who forgets to call her mom; and sometimes, she is also a writer and editor.

The middle child of seven, Riley was born and raised in a Detroit suburb and currently lives in Chicago on the stolen land of the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa peoples. She earned her BA and MA in Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse from DePaul University, was a member of the 2023 Muña Art Writing Residency cohort, a 2025 ACRE resident, and participated in the 2025 Tin House Winter Workshop. Her work has appeared in Sixty Inches from Center, A Great Gay Book, Skin, and Under, and Catapult. She is currently an editor for Sixty Inches from Center.