When American composer Theodore Wiprud first read Emma’s poetry it inspired him to set some of her work to music. But he needed a singer. Emma said she was a singer. She sang for him. Thus began their artistic collaboration. Previewed last May at the National Opera Centre in New York “Girl on Fire” – a song cycle on its way to becoming an evening length theatrical work – looks at the life of a girl whose experience of life is so extreme, that throughout her harrowing physical and emotional journey to redemption, she feels as if she is literally on fire.