| Elizabeth Searle | |
|---|---|
Photo By Sarahana Shrestha |
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| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer |
| Nationality | United States |
| Period | 1982 - present |
| Genres | Literary fiction, Erotic literature |
Elizabeth Searle is an American novelist and short story writer. Her works have included the novel A Four Sided Bed and the short story collections My Body to You and Celebrities in Disgrace. Her new novel "Girl Held in Home" is forthcoming in October 2011. She wrote the libretto for Tonya and Nancy:The Opera which was produced in 2006. She also wrote the libretto for the expanded "Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera" which premiered in February 2008. A new production was produced in Boston in 2011.
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Searle was born in Penn Wynne, Pennsylvania. Her father Bill is a Democratic Party activist and retired personnel director; Barbara, her mother, is a children's librarian. She has a younger sister, Kate, who works at MIT and Bill, her older brother, is a videographer.
Searle received a B.A. from Oberlin College and her Master's degree from Brown University. She was a special education teacher and taught students with autism in schools located in New Haven, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island.
In 1982, Searle's short story, "Missing LaDonna", appeared in Redbook. This was followed by stories placed in the South Carolina Review, the Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and other journals. In 1993 her first book, My Body To You, was published. In 1992, it had been named winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award by the Iowa Writers Workshop. James Salter, a novelist and screenwriter, who wrote The Hunters, Downhill Racer, The Appointment and others, acted as judge.
A Four Sided Bed, Searle's first novel, was published by Graywolf Press in 1998 and received positive reviews from Kirkus and Booklist.
A novella and collection of short stories entitled Celebrities in Disgrace was published in 2001. When discussing one of the themes of this collection during an interview with Post Road Magazine, Searle said, "I had a phrase in my mind, 'the witch of ambition,' and I do think there is this sort of dark force inside of people and any of those dark forces are hard to write about but they're the ones you want to write about...." Ambition and the search for attention seem to be the "...driving forces of our time."[1]
"Celebrities in Disgrace," the title novella, was called a 'miniature masterpiece' by New York Times Book Review.
Tonya and Nancy:The Opera previewed at the Zero Arrow Theatre of the American Repertory Theatre in 2006, produced by Tufts Music. It was selected by Opera Vista as one of the three best new one-act operas of the year in 2007. In 2010, it was performed by Mixed Precipitation in a new production in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
'Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera', a full length musical, premiered in 2008, produced by Triangle Productions. It featured libretto by Searle and music by Michael Teoli. The show was reviewed as "brilliant and touching" in Portland Mercury and received widespread media attention described in The Oregonian. It premiered in a new version in January 2011, produced by Harborside Films and performed at the American Repertory Theater's Oberon Theater.
Searle has taught creative writing at Brown University, Emerson College, the University of Southern Maine's Program in Creative Writing, Rutgers University, the University of Massachusetts Boston and other institutions. She has been a member, officer and committee chairperson of the New England chapter of International PEN. In 1984, Searle married software developer John Hodgkinson; they have a son, Will and reside in Arlington, Massachusetts.