Elizabeth Weiser

Elizabeth Weiser’s writing journey has taken her around the world. She had her first real taste of the world with a summer working in a mountain-ringed Guatemalan orphanage during a civil war. After college, she moved to Washington, DC, with a degree in anthropology and spent ten years inspired by the dedication and clear-eyed optimism of other activists. But the writing call was too strong, and she moved to Texas to study creative writing. A series of short stories followed. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach and write in Ankara, Turkey, falling in love with both the country and the teaching of writing. A PhD in rhetoric and composition led to her current position as a professor in the department of English at The Ohio State University. Elizabeth Weiser has spent the past 15 years writing and editing scholarly books and articles on peace-making rhetoric and inclusive nationalism. She serves on international boards and has traveled across six continents. Lumen, her first novel, is the culmination of years of exploring a world filled with good people trying to make connections in ravaging circumstances. Its message of hopeful resilience in the face of darkness resonates because, to her, that is the world we live in once we step outside our comfort zones. Its fantastical elements are playing out in narrative the pain but also the resistance and promise all around us. Born in Minnesota, Elizabeth Weiser now lives outside Columbus, Ohio, with her writer-teacher husband and (sometimes) her college-going daughter. Their two cats are very happy their people spend so much time writing, though they sometimes wish that bothersome laptop would get out of a cat’s sleeping space.