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 storyteller, essayist, and art writer.

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 and was a member of the 2023 Muña Art Writing Residency cohort. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Sixty Inches from Center, Chicago Gallery News, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s journal of arts administration & policy. She is currently an editor for Sixty Inches from Center.