Elissa Altman is the author of the acclaimed hybrid memoir Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, an examination of the role that permission,story ownership, and fear play in the creative process; her forthcoming book, Where You Used to Be, an investigation of the marriage of creativity and grief, is coming in 2027 from Godine Books. She is the award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man's Feast, and the bestselling Substack of the same name; she is a winner of the James Beard Award, a finalist for the Pushcart Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Maine Literary Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and her work has appeared in publications including Orion, The Bitter Southerner, Print, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, the Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission, storytelling, and creativity, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. A highly sought-after teacher for over a decade, she leads regular workshops on the craft of memoir at Center for Fiction, Truro Center for the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, Kripalu, Esalen, and beyond, and lives in New England with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.