Elizabeth Benedict

Elizabeth Benedict moves between novels, essays, teaching, editing, writing craft, memoir, and collaborative nonfiction. Me, My Hair, and I is an anthology she edited under the fuller subtitle Twenty-Seven Women Untangle an Obsession. Algonquin Books released it in 2015 with essays about hair as a marker of family, race, religion, health, politics, and personal identity. Contributors include Anne Lamott, Maria Hinojosa, Deborah Tannen, Bharati Mukherjee, Jane Smiley, and Siri Hustvedt, while Benedict contributes an essay of her own. The collection followed her edited volumes Mentors, Muses & Monsters and What My Mother Gave Me. Benedict’s solo work includes the novels Almost and The Practice of Deceit, the craft guide The Joy of Writing Sex, and the memoir Rewriting Illness. Me, My Hair, and I reflects her editorial method of using distinct personal accounts to illuminate a shared subject without reducing their cultural and individual differences to one experience.