Biography

Elsa graduated from Carleton College with a degree in Classical Languages. After college, she and her husband joined the Peace Corps and served two years in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, a former Portuguese colony. During the first year they lived in a small, remote village working with local women on community gardening projects and inoculating chickens, sheep, and goats.

Since the village had no electricity, this was an ideal time to venture into novel writing -- all written out longhand. In the second year they moved to the capital, Bissau, and worked with IUCN, the World Conservation Union, to help form the country's first national park. After returning to the U.S., Elsa worked at Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program, then moved to her native Washington state to venture into writing full-time. She now lives on Bainbridge Island with her husband, cat, and two dogs.

• Read an interview with Elsa
• Allen Wright's interview
• Peace Corps Writers interview

(Photo right: Elsa with Tiger, a good friend. By Katherine Keating, 2003

Photo below: At the Literary Lions dinner, benefiting the King County Library System Foundation, March 2005)