Elyssa East is an American novelist. She is the author of the historical fiction novel Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, which chronicles a murder that occurred in an area known as Dogtown, Massachusetts, just outside of Gloucester, in 1984. As part of her research for the book, East interviewed the murderer, Peter Hodgkins, in prison. [1] This novel won the 2010 L. L. Winship/P.E.N. New England Award and has been critically reviewed. [2] According to East, her novel was inspired in part by the paintings by Mardsen Hartley of Dogtown. [3]
East grew up in Marietta, GA[4] and attended Reed College, where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 1994. She went on to received a Master's of Fine Arts from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She currently lives in New York and teaches Creative Writing at Purchase College.