Elizabeth Benedict

About Elizabeth Benedict

Elizabeth Benedict is a highly regarded novelist, journalist, teacher of creative writing, editor, and writing coach. She has published five acclaimed novels, a classic book on writing fiction, and hundreds of reviews, essays, and magazine articles. She is the editor of the upcoming anthology, Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (November 2009 Free Press/Simon & Schuster).

Her novels have established her reputation as a writer who "specializes in the subterranean currents of modern relationships, the secret motivations and betrayals that underlie everyday interactions." Hallie Ephron in the Boston Globe called her most recent novel, The Practice of Deceit "a wickedly funny literary suspense novel" that is "wry, at times heartbreaking, always smart and entertaining."Newsday's reviewer said that Benedict's "wit is as sharp as her eye, and twice as fast. She writes the hard, horrifying truth about human nature, and it is addictively entertaining." Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan chose her previous novel, the bestseller Almost, as one of her top five novels of 2001.

Her first novel, Slow Dancing, published in 1985, was shortlisted for the National Book Award. She is also the author of several other novels and of a classic book, The Joy of Writing Sex , which is used widely in writing programs. She's taught fiction and non-fiction writing at Barnard, the New School, Princeton, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Swarthmore College, and MIT and has written for many publications, including The Huffington Post , The Rumpus, The New York Times, Salmagundi, Esquire, Tin House,Harper's Bazaar, and The American Prospect.

Elizabeth Benedict
photo: Emma Dodge Hanson

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Free Essays

What I Learned About Sex On the Internet
Mad Dog Taborsky and Me

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