Elissa Altman

Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of the upcoming Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, and critically acclaimed memoirs, Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing; Poor Man’s Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking; and Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw. 

Altman's work has appeared in publications including Orion, O: The Oprah Magazine, Lion's Roar, The Guardian, and the Washington Post where her column, "Feeding My Mother" ran for a year. Elissa writes the best-selling Substack, Poor Man's Feast, and teaches, writes, and speaks widely on the intersection of storytelling, permission, and the creative spirit. She has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at Fine Arts Work Center, Truro Center for the Arts, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, College of William and Mary, and internationally. She lives in Connecticut with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.  

"Elissa Altman’s marvelous and passionate new book, Permission, is going to breathe freedom into your life. It is a clarion call for writers to tell their hard, lifelong truth, no matter how many decades they have agreed to stay silent. Lies and cover-ups won’t save you. This book just might." —Anne Lamott

Learn more about this presenter's work: