Elizabeth McNeill
Writer & Editor
Elizabeth McNeill is a Florida-born book nerd who now writes and edits in the Midwest. Until recently, she served as a Daily Editor at the Chicago Review of Books, where she ran the feature series "Checking out Historical Chicago." Her writing can also be found in Electric Literature, Oh Reader, Full Stop, Cleveland Review of Books, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Hopscotch Translation, and Mid-Level Management Literary Magazine. When not visiting her local library with toddler-like glee, she enjoys running in nature preserves, watching women's soccer, and spoiling her cat.
Looking for clips?
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Feature braiding historical research and interviews: "Checking out Historical Chicago: Kathleen Rooney's From Dust to Stardust"
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Q&A, editing, hook, short summary: "A Pharmaceutical Voice: An Interview with Anne K. Yoder on The Enhancers"
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Long summary, critical thinking, cultural conversations: "The Red Zone: A Love Story - Chloe Caldwell"
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Storytelling, voice, humor: "We Are Emergencies"
Latest Review
"The Avian Hourglass - Lindsey Drager"
Full Stop
"The novel travels through diegetic time like a planet’s orbit, rotating around its axis to complete a day (i.e., a section) and revolving around the sun to complete a year (i.e., the book). A planet’s orbit, and this novel, end right where they began. Afterall, as the characters remind each other: 180 degrees is both a line and a half-circle. Drager thus asks us to read The Avian Hourglass by holding seeming opposites in each hand. This novel is fiction. This novel is true. This novel is the future. This novel is the present."
Latest Feature
"Checking out Historical Chicago: Cynthia Pelayo's Forgotten Sisters"
Chicago Review of Books
"Although Pelayo rejects the label 'historical fiction' for what she does, she acknowledges that historical research is an essential part of her process. Her true crime poetry, for instance, reflects such a keen understanding of each case’s details that the collection seems to emit ghostly human shapes, as if each murdered girl and woman from Pelayo’s poems were hovering beside the reader."