News & Media
Video reel
Latest books and writing news
Select an item for more details and links.
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Aug 29, 2026: Fall 2026 Event Dates Announced
A number of promotional events and appearances, including support for Elizabeth’s forthcoming novel, Lock Her Up, conferences, and more, have been confirmed for fall 2026. Other key engagements include an online course in script writing in January 2027 in collaboration with Washington, DC’s Politics and Prose bookstore. You can get all the details on the Events page.
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Aug 15, 2026: Short Fiction publication roundup
Elizabeth has recently published short fiction pieces in a number of places, including:
- Guest Fiction Editor, Solstice, (Spring 2026)
- “Perp-walk Prologue,” an excerpt from Lock Her Up, Solstice (Spring 2025)
- “Joni in the Birth Room,” Portland Monthly (May 2025)
- “The Mask of Red Death,” Woven Tale Press Vol X, No 5 (July 2022)
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Jul 7, 2026: The Drama Room is a Finalist for Kirkus Indie Book Awards
The Drama Room is a Finalist in the “Literary Fiction” category for the 2026 Kirkus Indie Awards!
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May 1, 2026: The Drama Room is a Finalist for the 2026 Hoffer Award
Elizabeth’s novel The Drama Room was announced as “Finalist” for the 2026 Eric Hoffer Book Award. According to the award administrators, “Finalists are selected by category scoring and considered for honors. There are typically 1-6 books per category remaining as finalists that nearly rose to category honors.”
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Apr 17, 2026: Author Nadja Maril recommends The Drama Room
In a post on her blog, author Nadja Maril praised The Drama Room, writing:
Each piece is startling different. The subject matter may make some uncomfortable, but this is the “Drama Room” where the stakes are high.
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Feb 10, 2026: Interview with “7AM Novelist” host Michelle Hoover
Author Michelle Hoover (Bottomland, The Quickening), whose Substack is called 7AM Novelist, interviewed Elizabeth in February about “Reverse Engineering for the Script Curious.” They discuss “how her scriptwriting has helped her fiction and vice versa, for any of you who might be “script curious.”
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Dec 26, 2025: Arts Fuse Magazine favorites The Drama Room
Boston arts magazine Arts Fuse has included The Drama Room in its list of “Favorite Books of 2025,” writing:
The Drama Room…continues Searle’s fearless exploration of an ugly, particularly American pair of traits: corrosive envy of those more successful, and joy in tearing them down. The interplay between the powerful and powerless, reaching into the sexual, often changing places.
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Dec 9, 2025: The Drama Room reviewed in Kirkus
Kirkus has reviewed The Drama Room, describing it as “Daring plots with evocative prose and complex characters.”
Latest film and theater news
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Aug 29, 2026: Screenplay for Lock Her Up wins prize
Elizabeth’s screenplay for Lock Her Up has won several Best Thriller Script prizes in 2026, including at the Hollywood Stage Script Film Competition, Hollywood Best Indie Film Awards, and Hollywood International Film & Screenplay Awards.
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Aug 29, 2026: Opera with libretto by Elizabeth to premiere in October
“Seven Rabbits on a Pole,” an opera about the Italian Immigrant experience, with libretto by Elizabeth, based on a play by John C. Picardi, will be performed in a concert version by the Lowell Chamber Orchestra Oct 3rd, with Elizabeth and composer Pasquale Tassone speaking afterwards.
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Mar 1, 2026: “Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera” produced in North Carolina
Elizabeth’s theater work, Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera, had a three week run in February and March, 2026, fully produced by Dogged Utopia Productions in Asheville.
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Jan 15, 2026: Screenplay for Lock Her Up receives accolades from press
A write-up on Elizabeth’s script Lock Her Up was printed in 2026 issues of the film magazines Indie Shorts and Film Daily after her script won Best Thriller Script in the Lonely Wolf International Film Festival.
Indie Shorts wrote:
“Elizabeth Searle thrusts us into contemporary American xenophobia’s belly with searing thriller excavating race, gender, and justice intersectional fault lines. Searle dismantles “model minority” myth transforming Sylvie Chin Flynn into lightning rod for the nation’s corrosive anxieties in Kafkaesque descent. The screenplay’s masterstroke lies in tripartite violence structure culminating when Sylvie wields pool cue—”model minority” stereotype shatters alongside Troy’s skull yet Sylvie becomes criminal.”
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Jan 5, 2026: Substack post about short play, “January 6th: A Forever Day”
Elizabeth directed a 2026 staged reading of the short play “January 6th: A Forever Day” in her role as Director of the Democracy Theater Project at WDA-MA (Writers for Democratic Action). She wrote about the production on author Randy Susan Meyers’s Substack.
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Jan 24, 2024: “Ask Me Anything” with Women in Film & Video New England
Elizabeth did an “AMA” (or “ask me anything”) on the topic of “fiction to film” with the New England chapter of Women and Film in Video.
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Dec 18, 2023: Elizabeth pens guest post for “Stage 32” blog
In December, Elizabeth wrote for the blog “Stage 32” about finding her script manager.
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Jun 6, 2023: “I’ll Show You Mine” released in theaters and streaming
“I’ll Show You Mine,” a Duplass Brothers Productions feature film that Elizabeth co-wrote, was recently released on Peacock after having been released via Gravitas Ventures in select theaters and on VOD (per Variety). The film was reviewed in The New York Times and appeared on Times’s “What to Read & Watch” list for 2023.
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Jun 1, 2023: “Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera” is now available to stream online
Streaming Musicals, a website devoted to providing streamed performances of popular musical productions, has added Tonya & Nancy to its lineup! The production, from 54 Below’s 2018 production in New York, is currently free to watch.