Elise Blackwell

Elise Blackwell (born July 18, 1964) is an American novelist, born in Austin, Texas and raised primarily in southern Louisiana. She studied creative writing at Louisiana State University before entering the MFA Program of the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of five novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Grub, An Unfinished Score, and The Lower Quarter released in October 2015. Blackwell has also written short fiction and cultural criticism, which has appeared in such publications as Topic, Seed, Witness, Global City Review, and Quick Fiction. She is on the creative writing faculty of the University of South Carolina.

Blackwell is the host and curator for The Open Book Series, a yearly event sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina. It is a literary series, public course, and community read all in one. Writers who have visited include Ian McEwan, Colson Whitehead, John Banville, Celeste Ng, Teju Cole, Jennifer Egan, David Mitchell, Chang Rae Lee, and Marilynne Robinson. All events are free and open to the public.[1] The 2019 lineup consists of four writers: Michael Crummey, Timothy Donnelly, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton