Novelist │ McSweeney's Contributor │ Youth Advocate

To have authored what The New York Times Book Review has called “the most intelligent and beautiful book ever written about juvenile detention centers, sadomasochism and drugs” is certainly an uncommon distinction.  But for a writer who spent the better part of his adolescence as a ward of the State of Illinois and has worked variously as a cabdriver, stripper, bartender and marketing executive as well as teaching creative writing at Stanford University, the uncommon is to be expected.
 
Elliott’s fiction, which JT Leroy called “spare, erotic and beautiful,” draws heavily on his own past. Elliott’s acclaimed novel, Happy Baby, is “an autobiographical heartbreaker … concerned with the ways institutional violence shapes its victims” (The Village Voice).  It is a dark and affecting look at how abuse often becomes associated with affection.
 
It sounds like burbling cliché to describe a book like this as a tale of miraculous survival, or a fable demonstrating that a literary sensibility can grow even in the stoniest soil. Let’s say instead that Happy Baby is a most impressive little novel, heartbreakingly and bewilderingly alive in a way most bigger books can’t even imagine."

--Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
 
Garnering significant critical acclaim, Happy Baby was named one of the best books of 2004 by Salon.com, The Village Voice, The Journal News and New York Newsday.  In addition to Happy Baby, Elliott is the author of three other novels (A Life Without Consequences, What It Means To Love You and Jones Inn) and a political reportage/memoir chronicling his time on the 2004 presidential campaign trail.  He also edited Politically Inspired, an anthology of political stories by prominent writers. 
 
Elliott’s most recent work, his first memoir, The Adderall Diaries, was a New York Times editors’ pick and has been described as a work of “genius” by both Vanity Fair and The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2010, the actor James Franco purchased the film rights to The Adderall Diaries -- he plans to adapt, direct and star in the film version of Elliot's novel.

A native of Chicago, Elliott spent the ages of 13 to 18 in state custody, growing up in juvenile detention facilities, group homes, and foster care.  His experience in this gritty and harrowing world colors much of his fiction, compelling the San Francisco Chronicle to comment, “A Life Without Consequences [his second novel] should be required reading in every social service agency in Chicago.  A copy of it belongs in every teenage runaway drop-in center in the country.  Nobody who reads it will ever vote for another initiative to treat juvenile offenders more like adults.”
 
After being shunted through the various institutions run by the Illinois  Department of Child & Family Services, Elliott luckily came into the care of the Jewish Children’s Bureau. Determined to go back to school and get good grades, he graduated from high school and earned a scholarship to the University of Illinois.  After receiving his BA, he went on to Northwestern for an MA in Film Studies. In 2001, he was awarded the prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Good fortune and talent have taken Elliott far from his difficult youth in group homes and on the streets of Chicago, but he is still outspoken about the dire need for reform in our child welfare system.
 
As well as an accomplished fiction writer, Elliott is also an avid observer of the American political process.  And as someone who waited until the age of 28 to register to vote, he is keenly attuned to the reasons fueling voter apathy.  
 
During the 2004 campaign he covered the presidential primaries for seven months, writing the humorous and insightful political memoir Looking Forward to It: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process (Picador, 2004). After finishing the book, Elliott persuaded even greater numbers of apathetic young people to become voters by organizing “Operation Ohio.” Enlisting the help of hot, emerging authors and cult literary figures—including Tobias Wolff, Dave Eggers, and Michael Chabon—he hit the road in the fall of 2004, touring college campuses in a literature-inspired voter registration drive.

Elliott lives in San Francisco, where he is editor of the wildly popular online magazine TheRumpus.Net. He continues to get authors and readers involved in the political process and organizes the Progressive Reading Series. He has taught creative writing at Stanford University as well as workshops and conferences nationwide, and he is a frequent contributor to GQ, Esquire, The Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, McSweeney’s, The Sun and The Huffington Post.

Selected Writings

Fiction

• Happy Baby (MacAdam/Cage, 2004)
• What It Means to Love You: A Novel (MacAdam/Cage, 2002)
• A Life Without Consequences (MacAdam/Cage, 2001)
• Jones Inn (Boneyard Press, 1998)

Nonfiction

• The Adderall Diaries (Graywolf Press, 2009)
• Looking Forward to It: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process (Picador, 2004)
• Politically Inspired, Editor, et al. (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) 

Awards

2009  Time Out New York's Best Book of the Year for The Adderall Diaries
2009  Kirkus Review's Best Book of the Year for The Adderall Diaries
2004  Village Voice’s Favorite Books of the Year for Happy Baby and Looking Forward to It
2004  New York Newsday’s Favorite Books for Happy Baby
2004  Salon’s Top 10 Books of the Year for Happy Baby
2004  Newcity Chicago’s Top 5 Books of 2004 for Happy Baby
2004  Finalist, New York Public Library Young Lions Award for Happy Baby
2004  Silver Medal, California Book Award for Happy Baby
2001-2003  Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University

For more information about Stephen Elliott and his work, please visit www.stephenelliott.com.