Stephen Elliott (author)

Stephen Elliott (born December 3, 1971) is an American author and activist living in San Francisco who has written and published six books. He is also the founder of the political action committee LitPAC, which holds readings by authors to raise money for progressive candidates.

Elliott grew up in Chicago. He was made a ward of the court in his teen years and placed in several group homes. He attended the University of Illinois and went on to receive his master's degree from Northwestern University. He was the Marsh McCall lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University.

Stephen Elliott was awarded the 2001 Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, given to emerging writers in fiction and poetry.

Stephen Elliott went on the campaign trail and wrote a book about the 2004 U.S. presidential race, "Looking Forward To It: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About It and Love the American Electoral Process" (Picador, Oct 2004, ISBN 0312424159). His novel "Happy Baby" was edited by Dave Eggers and co-published by McSweeney's and MacAdam/Cage and was released in February 2004. The paperback of "Happy Baby" was published by Picador in January 2005. His most recent book, "My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up" (ISBN 1573442550), a collection of S&M erotica, sometimes referred to as a sexual memoir, was published by Cleis Press.

In April 2007, he published an essay about his experiment of not using the Internet for one month, writing "I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out." [http://www.pw.org/mag/0705/newselliott.htm]

Published works

;Novels

*Happy Baby (2004)
*What It Means to Love you (2002)
*A Life Without Consequences (2001)
*Jones Inn (1998)

;Essays and Non-fiction

*Looking Forward to It (2004)

;Short story collections

* [http://cleispress.com/book_page.php?book_id=180 My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up] (2006)

Awards

*Stegner Fellowship, 2001

External links

* [http://www.stephenelliott.com/ Official website]
* [http://stephenelliott.com/lydiaphotos-Pages/Image2.html Photo of Stephen Elliott by Lydia Lunch]
* [http://www.macadamcage.com/catalog/images/authors/S_Elliott.jpgPhoto of Stephen Elliott]
* [http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/11/29/stripper_year/ Nude Awakening] - excerpt from "My Girlfriend Comes to the City" on Salon.com
* [http://www.nerve.com/fiction/elliot/innocenceabroad/ Innocence Abroad] - story from Nerve.com
* [http://smokelong.com/flash/4240.asp On the Way to Work] - story from "SmokeLong Quarterly", December 15, 2006
* [http://www.litrave.com/ai/stephenelliott.htm/ Interview with LitRave, October, 2006]
* [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/elections/chi-050427elliott,0,1092589.story Chicago Tribune Profile]