Elizabeth Searle. Photo by Sharona Jacobs.
Photo: Sharona Jacobs

About Elizabeth

“Elizabeth Searle is an electric talent. Testing taboo limits, tuned to our pop culture pulsebeat, Searle creates spellbinding tales for our times.” Ann Hood, New York Times Bestselling Author

Elizabeth has always written both fiction and scripts. Growing up on the move — from PA to SC to KY to AZ — she wrote scripts that she acted out with her sister, including a ‘radio soap opera’ called What a Way to Live. Elizabeth briefly majored in Acting at Arizona State University — despite a tendency to faint onstage — and switched to fiction writing at Oberlin College. After earning an MA at Brown University, Elizabeth worked in Special Education with autistic students while finishing her first book, My Body to You (Iowa Short Fiction Prize). Her novel A Four-Sided Bed was an ALA nominee and Boston Globe Paperback Bestseller, followed by Celebrities in Disgrace, which the New York Times called a ‘miniature masterpiece.’ As a mid-life Mom, Elizabeth returned to scriptwriting, creating Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera, which has been produced in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, NYMF in New York, and more. The show drew major media, including interviews with Elizabeth on ESPN Hollywood, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, NPR and the AP.

Full Bio

Elizabeth’s next two novels were inspired by real Boston-area crimes: Girl Held in Home and We Got Him. She has co-edited anthologies on teen idols and soap operas. Her own work has appeared in over a dozen anthologies and in magazines such as Ploughshares, AGNI, Kenyon Review, New England Review and Solstice. Her newest books are The Drama Room (2025), a Finalist for the Kirkus Indie Books award, and a new literary thriller, Lock Her Up (2026), which has been translated into several languages, and which is also written as a screenplay. Elizabeth is a writer on two short films which screened at festivals as well as a one-act play, Stolen Girl Song.

She co-wrote the feature film, I’ll Show You Mine (Duplass Brothers Productions), which was well-reviewed in the New York Times and more and released in select theaters. It’s now widely available on home screens via Amazon Prime, Peacock and more. Elizabeth is working on several film and TV projects, including a feature film adaptation of her novel A Four-Sided Bed.

She’s taught writing at Emerson College, UMass Boston and Bennington College’s MFA program. Currently Elizabeth teaches fiction and scriptwriting at Stonecoast MFA. She was on the Board of PEN/New England and helped found the fundraising group Writers for Blue. She’s Director of the Theater for Democracy project at Writers for Democratic Action-MA. She lives near Boston with her family and enjoys movies, music, politics, cats, biking and hanging out with her ‘boys.’ ▣

Contacts

Author

Film & Television

“Tonya & Nancy”

“A Four-Sided Bed”