Elyssa East

TWH 2025 Major Nonfiction Workshop, Nonfiction Craft Lab, Faculty Reading

Elyssa East’s first book, Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, won the 2010 L. L. Winship/P.E.N. New England Award in Nonfiction. Dogtown was also a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Awards and an Editors’ Choice Selection of the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Elyssa has received fellowships from the Jerome, Ragdale, and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundations, Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Phillips Library and the Corporation of Yaddo. Her reviews, reportage, and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Kansas City Star, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Al Jazeera America and The Oxford American. Elyssa’s short fiction has been published in Cape Cod Noir and USA Noir: The Best of the Akashic Noir. She has taught Creative Writing at Columbia University, NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Studies, Rhode Island School of Design, SUNY Purchase, and Cleveland State University. She’s thrilled to be returning to The Writer’s Hotel for her ninth year with this incredible program.