Meg Elison
Meg Elison is an American author and feminist essayist whose writings often incorporate the themes of female empowerment, body positivity, and gender flexibility. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award, and her second novel, The Book of Etta, was nominated for the award in 2017. Elison's work has appeared in several markets, including Fantasy & Science Fiction, Terraform, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Catapult, and Electric Literature.
Elison "grew up a military brat with the United States ARMY" where she "lived all over the country." At fourteen she began working to support herself. Elison has lived in Missouri, Savannah, Nevada, North Carolina, Utah, Southern California, and New York, contributing to her vast ability for distinct settings.
Background
A high school dropout, Elison advanced through the California community college system and ultimately graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in English. Before becoming a professional writer, non-fiction editor, and essayist, she had an interest in opera and medicine as possible vocations. She has written and spoken extensively on the poverty and early queer identity that came to inform much of her work.Between 2014 and 2019, she published a trilogy of novels known as The Road to Nowhere, which detail the post-apocalyptic plight of women in the fallout of a global epidemic. Written primarily in a journal format, the first entry of the series, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, follows one surviving medical worker as she struggles to find civilization and to provide birth control and medical care to the women that she meets. The Book of Etta revisits the community of plague survivors several generations later as a female protagonist strikes out against an oppressive male-dominated regime. The third and final book of the series, The Book of Flora, continues the story through the memories of Flora, a woman who was a sex slave.
Elison's first young adult novel, Find Layla, centers on a teen suffering from neglect at home. Filming a video to shine a spotlight on the bitter truth of her treatment, the footage goes viral online, prompting Child Protective Services to investigate.
She is also winner of the 2021 Locus Award for Best Novelette for "The Pill", and she earned a nomination for its published collection Big Girl Plus....
Awards/Nominations
| Year | Work | Award | Category | Result | Refs |
| 2014 | The Book of the Unnamed Midwife | Otherwise Award | — | ||
| 2015 | The Book of the Unnamed Midwife | Philip K. Dick Award | — | Won | |
| 2017 | The Book of Etta | Otherwise Award | — | ||
| 2018 | The Book of Etta | Philip K. Dick Award | — | ||
| 2018 | "Big Girl" | Otherwise Award | — | ||
| 2019 | The Book of Flora | Otherwise Award | — | ||
| 2020 | "The Pill" | Nebula Award | Novelette | ||
| 2021 | "The Pill" | Hugo Award | Novelette | ||
| 2021 | "The Pill" | Locus Award | Novelette | Won | |
| 2021 | "The Pill" | Theodore Sturgeon Award | — | ||
| 2021 | Big Girl | Locus Award | Collection | ||
| 2021 | "Dresses Like White Elephants" | Locus Award | Short Story | ||
| 2022 | "The Pizza Boy" | Locus Award | Short Story | ||
| 2022 | "The Revolution Will Not Be Served with Fries" | Locus Award | Short Story | ||
| 2023 | "The Little God of the Staircase" | Eugie Award | — |
Fictional Novels
The Road to Nowhere Trilogy:Collections
- * "The Pill", a novelette, and the collection's centerpiece
- * "Big Girl", the eponymous short story
- * "Such People In It", speculative short fiction with alternative history elements
- * "Gone with Gone with the Wind", a non-fiction essay and discussion on revisiting and reassessing classic literature
- * "Guts", a short story about weight loss surgery
- * "", a short story centering around a group of small-town teens requisitioning an overgrown pumpkin and destroying it
- * "Afterimage", an exploration of a VR world
Short fiction
- "Next of Kin"
- "Personal Trainer"
- "Nobody Told Me"
- "El Hugé"
- "In Loving Memory"
- "The Middle Child"
- "Big Girl"
- "Hysteria"
- "Matchmaker"
- "Safe Surrender"
- "Rapture"
- "Endor House"
- "Hey Alexa"
- "Come on Down"
- "Familiar Face"
- "Dresses Like White Elephants"
- "Such People in It"
- "The Pill"
- "Guess"
- "The Pizza Boy"
- "The Revolution Will Not Be Served with Fries"
- "Mother Dough"
Essays
- Writing with My Keys Between My Fingers, published in Uncanny, Jan/Feb 2020
External
Category:Living people
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:American women short story writers
Category:American fantasy writers
Category:American women science fiction and fantasy writers
Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni
Category:21st-century American women novelists