Elise Blackwell, American novelist, born Baton Rouge Lousiana. The daughter of botanists, Blackwell was educated at Louisiana State University before entering the Creative Writing Program at the University of California, Irvine, where she studied with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Michael Chabon. Blackwell's first novel, Hunger, was published in 2003 by Little Brown, a division of Time Warner. The book won praise from Nobel Prize Laureate J.M. Coetzee and was selected by the L.A. Times as a Notable Book for that year. Hunger is a historical dramatization of events surrounding the Siege of Leningrad. Blackwell has taught creative writing at Boise State University and the University of South Carolina.
