Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

I am a storyteller and the author of ten books in many genres, most recently She Never Told Me About the Ocean, a mythology-infused novel about mothers and daughters (2021), and What Doesn’t Kill Her, a collective memoir of women’s resilience stories that I co-edited (2021). I have published many poems and delivered the TEDx talk “Edit your life like a poem.”

My projects in the works include an organizing book for the soul called Edit Your Life; a middle-grade novel in verse called Ark, which was honored with a Covid Cultural Commissioning Fund Award; and a novel about sisters called Rose Child, White Nights, an adaptation of the 1001 Nights frame story. 

I have literature degrees from Harvard (B.A.), Georgetown (M.A.), and the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D). I wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the intersections between memoir and myth, a concept that informs my teaching and writing (and my entire way of looking at the world, as detailed in this Harvard Magazine article). Since 2012 I have taught writing at Harvard Extension School, where I won their 2018 James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award. I also tutor for Oxford University’s Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing and teach private and community workshops.

I spent my childhood living in Austin, Texas and the majority of my adulthood so far living in Boise, Idaho, with a lovely detour in Cornwall, UK. I live with my husband and two children. In my free time I love to make up stories with my young, hike, travel, read, make vegan soups, make new friends, and drink tea with old friends.