About
Photo courtesy of The History Center in Tompkins County.
Elizabeth McNeill is a writer and editor who finds half-told stories and imagines a way into their silences. With her knack for archival work, she excavates the lives of humans and nonhumans whose contributions to knowledge threatened the established order.
Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan, where she wrote a dissertation on the delightfully wacky pseudoscientific history of animal psychology. When not rewriting her dissertation as nonhuman-centered short stories, she can be found in her local archives. She is currently working on a project spotlighting controversial, yet forgotten female figures in Ithaca, New York's history. (The Midwest has her heart, but she's still processing the years she spent living next to those creepy killer gorges).
Until recently, Elizabeth served the Midwestern literary community as a Daily Editor at the Chicago Review of Books, collaborating with writers across the country to cover contemporary books. In this capacity, she also ran the feature series "Checking out Historical Chicago." She has interviewed some of the city's biggest literary names in examining how they bring historical Chicago to life on the page.
She now serves her local library community on its Friends of the Library Board.