About:

Elissa Field’s writing has been nominated for Pushcart, Best American Essays and Best Small Fictions, and included on the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist. Her flash and short fiction have appeared or forthcoming in CRAFT Literary, Reckon Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ghost Parachute, Monkeybicycle, HAD, The Citron Review, Fictive Dream, Maudlin House, BULL, Peatsmoke, Conjunctions, Frazzled Lit and Adelaide, and anthologized in Fractured Literary’s Anthology Volume 4, Duets 2, and the 2026 Ghost Parachute Anthology. (Links to most stories, below.) Nonfiction and craft essays have appeared in Writer Unboxed, Hypertext, Sun Sentinel and elsewhere.

She is a current Submissions Editor for SmokeLong Quarterly.

Elissa is querying agents, with a novel, series, and story collection available. Her literary noir thriller was long-listed in the First Pages novel contest. Prior adult literary, upmarket novel drafts have been finalist or listed for awards including the Heekin Foundation Award for the Novel in Progress and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. She is alumni of juried novel workshops including Bread Loaf (with Randall Kenan), Aspen Summer Words (with Hannah Tinti), Miami International (with Ann Hood), and Atlantic Arts (with Benjamin Percy). She was awarded a grant by Atlantic Arts and awarded the Doro Boehme Fellowship by Story Studio Chicago (for novel with Michael Zapata).

Her short fiction has been recognized as a winner in the Fractured Literary Anthology and honorable mention in the SmokeLong Quarterly Summer Fiction Contest. She was awarded an Emerging Writer Fellowship by SmokeLong Quarterly. An unpublished chapbook of flash fiction was a finalist in Fractured Literary’s Chapbook Contest, and a collection of flash and short fiction was a finalist for the Moon City Short Fiction Award.

Originally from Michigan, Elissa is in Florida by way of Atlanta, Charlotte, D.C., Richmond, a romantic detour in Bath, England, & Connecticut. She earned her Bachelor’s from Virginia Commonwealth University & a Master’s from the University of Florida. Her favorite coursework was done at the University of Bath (England) through the University of Rhode Island — history and literature courses taught on location in sites throughout England and Wales.

She is currently an English (Cambridge International), Logical Reasoning, and Journalism teacher. She also teaches English as a Second Language to adults. Previously, she taught ancient world history, most interestingly at a juried school for the arts. She leads writing workshops for adults. If no workshops are listed on this site, you can use the contact for availability.

As a freelancer, Elissa was principal for In the Company of Words, a writing & editing consultancy (with a side quest into trading rare books that once had her delivering a first edition Hemingway on a run up to Sacre Couer). She continues to take limited editing and coaching clients during fall, spring and summer windows. Use the contact form to inquire on availability.

If you’ve read Elissa’s stories, you might have the sense she’s seen a few things, done a few things… In previous careers, she has worked for a judge, been training manager for a major court system, been a paralegal, processed autopsy photos for the commonwealth’s attorney, been a real estate photographer, assisted caterers, run lights in a night club, worked in a gourmet shop, worked in a marina, & mucked stalls. The varied worlds of her characters — and her movement between literary fiction and noir — pay heed to the vast, eye-popping experiences she’s been party to.

If it jars your memory where you’ve met… Elissa has been active in numerous writing communities, including AWP, Flash Pack (love you guys), Writer Unboxed, Wordsmith Studio, Story One, Story Studio, Binders, Mystery Writers of America, Flash Fiction Festival (UK), and SmokeLong workshops.

She is easily found on social media: Instagram @elissalfield, Facebook & bluesky; fading twitter @elissafield. And Substack. If you’ve known her a long time, you may even know her Wordpress.

For those who’ve read her work, it is no surprise that she is mother to two wickedly funny sons. The fierce fight it took to raise two boys on her own is often a tender inspiration behind her fiction. Her work is equally influenced by her obsession with noir thrillers, Irish motorcycle racing, war journalists, obscure animals, and the aching search for loves lost.

Current projects:

Her novel draft, Never Said, has drawn some attention from agents. Her short story “That Bottle Green Phone Call, 2006” (in Reckon Review Feb. 2023) hints at the desperate search for a lost journalist that is a central theme to the novel. An unpublished excerpt, “Irish Whiskey at Le Louveteau,” earned juried workshop admission, a fellowship, shortlist for the Heekin Foundation Novel in Progress, and inquiries from agents.

Elissa’s published and pending flash and short fiction is assembling into a collection, titled There’s a Reason Things Bite. “Another Problem Eels Don’t Need” (published as an Honorable Mention in SmokeLong Quarterly’s Summer Fiction contest; nominated for a Best of 2022 with Ellipsis Zine), “One of Us Will Reach Valhalla,” “North American Field Guide to How It Falls Apart,” “If We’d Only… Well, We Might Have” (nominated for Best Small Fictions), and “Security” are among the published stories from the collection. Links to stories appear below. Editors may use the contact form to enquire about available stories.

Travel Red is the in house name for an unpublished, seven-book psychological thriller series with romantic elements that grew out of Elissa’s experience in law, fascination with forensics, and strong belief that noir has the capacity to illuminate brokenness and go deeply into the nuanced layers of human life. A fan of Tana French, Jane Casey, Abigail Dean, Daphne du Maurier , Elissa describes the series as, ‘if Tana French ever let her characters have a healthy love life.’ The first book in the series earned early recognition as a listed entry in the First Pages novel competition. A related flash fiction — “Come Down Off My Throne, Don’t Leave Your Body Alone” — was published by HAD. Agent enquiries welcome.

An earlier, unsubmitted novel, Breathing Water, is set in the Cuban exile art community of Miami at the time of the 1995 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters, and was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

Links and contact information are available on this site.