About Elissa Field
Of all things I write, I am most likely to put off updating my bio. The simple version is that I am a writer, teacher and parent, living in South Florida. I teach writing (and sometimes history) at a fabulous private school to middle grade kids who are endlessly entertaining, and am mother to two mad scientists (ages 8 & 10) who only rarely blow up the lab. I have worked in the past as a freelance writer as well as having a longstanding gig with the state courts, where I served alternately as assistant to several judges and as a staff writer. Cool job, one of my favorites.
While my nonfiction writing has occasionally interrupted fiction for big chunks of time, fiction is my biggest passion — the secret super hero identity lurking behind all other writing I do. On this site, you’ll find a summary of short stories including link to one available online, some that are finished and circulating to literary magazines, and a couple new ones. On a separate page are summaries of novel projects. Last school year, I balanced time between research for Wake or writing short stories, but all short stories went on hold as revisions to the novel took over all my concentration in the past couple months. Work goes slower during the school year, but I’ve been excited by how much more organized revisions have been since I started using Scrivener over the summer. The hope is to have a novel draft ready to query agents within the coming months.
You’ll also find my blog, which I used to write only when I had something big to say, but have increased posting to in recent months, particularly in response to having made an increasing number of interesting connections with other bloggers and twitter-folk. I post about writing, but also about art, travel and life. I have a dormant blog for parenting and teaching, called earthmonkeymama.
What about bio basics? I’m originally from Michigan, lived briefly in Atlanta and North Carolina, then in the DC area and Richmond, Virginia, before moving to Florida. Each of those places (and my parents’ home outside of NYC) have impacted my writing — from my farming grandparents and life on lakes in Michigan, to the year I was taught by an old Reverand who’d marched with Martin Luther King in Charlotte, to hours spent in stables in all of those places, to the southern influence of college in Richmond, to living in the tropics. I can’t mention where I’ve lived without mentioning traveling, since place and culture and languages fascinate me, as do international affairs. Degree-wise, I hold a bachelors in English and Writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, and am in the throes of applying to masters programs.
Not perfect, but for the moment that will have to be good enough, because I’m tired of the old bio that was up here and am taking it down. As the editors at PaperDarts said on their submissions guidelines, I can do that, because I’m the boss lady.
I enjoy reading comments and am glad you stopped in, so do feel free to contact me through twitter, facebook, pinterest or… or… I’m sure there’s more. The facebook page is just for writing, so don’t think we have to be BFF’s for you to “friend” me.
Best regards,
Elissa Field
