Elissa Elliott’s debut novel Eve: A Novel of the First Woman was released last month. This month, she’ll spend a lot of time reading around town. She’s got upcoming events at Magers & Quinn (tonight at 7 p.m.), Barnes & Noble in Rochester (Saturday at 2 p.m.) and a publication celebration at The Loft (February 25 at 7.pm.). Wow! Elliot is a contributing writer to Books & Culture and has optioned her first screenplay. She was a nonfiction winner in the 2003-2004 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, and received a SASE/Jerome Emerging Artist Grant in 2007.
What book(s) are you currently reading?
A while back, I was thinking that someone needed to write a screenplay about how Dorothy Day started the Catholic Worker movement in 1933, and how she fought for decent care and food for the poor and homeless in the slums of New York City. I’ve finally picked up her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, to understand what drove her to be a social activist. On another note, as the ALA Children’s Awards have been announced this past Monday, I’m reading all the winners, starting with Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Who?
I was in ninth grade, I believe, when we read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens in English class. Can I just say that I cried rivers of tears when Sidney Carton was guillotined in the end?
If your favorite author came to Minnesota, who would it be and what bar would you take him/her to?
I would have to go with Ann Patchett, because of Bel Canto, and I would take her to Cosmos in the Graves 601 Hotel. It’s elegant and upscale, like her writing.
What was your first favorite book?
Oh, now that’s a tough question, because my answer to that would have been (and still is) the book I’m reading now. If I had to choose the first book I found memorable it would have to be The Yearling by Rawlings. I was devastated by that book in seventh grade.
Let’s say Fahrenheit 451 comes to life, which book would you become in order to save it from annihilation?
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
What is one book you haven’t read but want to read before you die?
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville