Elna Baker

Elna Baker (born January 21, 1982) is an American writer and comedian. She has worked for the radio program This American Life since 2010, and is currently a producer. She has made appearances on The Moth, BBC Radio 4 and Studio 360. In October 2009, Penguin Books published her book The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, which chronicles her experience as a young, single Latter Day Saint living in New York City. As of April 2024 she co-hosts a podcast called Pretty Sure I Can Fly with Johnny Knoxville.

Early life and education Baker was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in what she describes as a "half-Mexican, half-Mormon" family. After age nine, the family moved to Madrid, Spain. Gary Baker ran Ural Boeing Manufacturing (UBM), a titanium factory in Russia, and then Boeing Tianjin Composites Company (BTC), a composites factory in China. Impressed with Baker's talent, Swados encouraged her to perform her stories live. For the rest of the semester, Baker would go over Swados's home on Fridays to learn about storytelling, a mentorship that continued for the next seven years.

In her memoir, Baker recounts being overweight growing up, Friends and family told her she would never be able to reach her dreams of being a wife and actress as long as she was "fat." A year after college, however, she went to a weight clinic, began a deprivation diet, and took phentermine that her doctor prescribed. After an article she wrote for Elle magazine, she was offered the chance to write a book. In 2009, she released a memoir called The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, named for the annual Mormon singles dance held in New York City. People magazine gave the book four stars, calling it a "wicked-funny debut."

Personal life Baker has had cosmetic surgery to remove excess skin from her weight loss, She suffers from idiopathic craniofacial erythema, or chronic blushing, and for years used scarves and turtlenecks to hide it. In a 2017 episode of This American Life, she recounted losing a television role because she looked "too nervous" on camera, an incident that made her want to get surgery to correct the problem. After learning of the procedure's side effects and moderate efficacy, however, she backed away from the idea. At 24, she got engaged to a fellow Mormon and moved to Utah to live with him, but called off the wedding when she realized she could not have the life she wanted there. She left the LDS Church after the publication of her memoir.

Baker married designer Mark Sikes in 2016. The couple later divorced.