Meg Elison

Meg Elison (born May 10, 1982) 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 (2014) 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.

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 (June 2014), 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 (February 2017) 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 (April 2019), continues the story through the memories of Flora, a woman who was a sex slave.

Elison's first young adult novel, Find Layla (September 2020), 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 Philip K. Dick Award— 2017 The Book of Etta Otherwise Award — 2018 Philip K. Dick Award — "Big Girl" Otherwise Award— 2019 The Book of Flora— 2020 "The Pill" Nebula AwardNovelette 2021 Hugo AwardNovelette Locus AwardNovelette Theodore Sturgeon Award — Big Girl Locus AwardCollection