Background and education

Elliott grew up in Chicago. In his adolescence he was made a ward of the court and placed in several group homes. He attended Mather High School and the University of Illinois, and went on to receive his master's degree in cinema studies from Northwestern University in 1996. In 2001, he was awarded the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, given to emerging writers in fiction and poetry. He was then the Marsh McCall lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University. Elliott is Jewish on his father's side.

Books and journalism

Elliott went on the campaign trail and wrote a book about the 2004 U.S. presidential race, Looking Forward To It: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About It and Love the American Electoral Process (Picador, October 2004, ISBN 0-312-42415-9). His novel Happy Baby, edited by Dave Eggers and co-published by McSweeney's and MacAdam/Cage, was released in February 2004. The paperback of Happy Baby was published by Picador in January 2005. His book My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up (ISBN 1573442550), a collection of S&M erotica, sometimes referred to as a sexual memoir, was published by Cleis Press in 2006.

In April 2007, he published an essay about his experiment of not using the Internet for one month, writing: "I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out."

In 2008, Elliott started The Rumpus, an online cultural commentary site.

His most recent book is a "true-crime memoir" called The Adderall Diaries (Graywolf Press, September 2009, ISBN 1-55597-538-0).

Films

In 2012, Elliott directed the film About Cherry, based on a script written by Lorelei Lee and himself. The film starred Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco and Dev Patel, and debuted at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival.

In December 2012, Elliott raised the funds via Kickstarter to shoot his second film, Happy Baby, based on his novel of the same name. Production was completed on July 7, 2013.

Published works

Novels

• Happy Baby (2004)
• What It Means to Love you (2002)
• A Life Without Consequences (2001)
• Jones Inn (1998)

Essays and Non-fiction

• Looking Forward to It (2004)
• The Adderall Diaries (2009)

Short story collections

• My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up (2006)

Films

• About Cherry (2012)
• Happy Baby (TBA)

Awards

• 2001 Stegner Fellowship

[ Source: Wikipedia ]