Elissa Altman

Author

With over a decade of experience teaching memoir writing workshops at every level, Elissa Altman brings years of teaching experience and writing expertise to every audience she speaks to.

Elissa Altman is also the author of the critically-acclaimed memoirs Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man’s Feast, and the bestselling essay substack of the same name. Her work has appeared in publications including Orion, The Bitter Southerner, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, where her column, “Feeding My Mother,” ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission, storytelling, and creativity, and 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, Maine Writers & Publishers, Kripalu, Truro Center for the Arts, Rutgers Community Writing Workshop, and beyond, and lives in Connecticut with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.

On March 11, 2025, Elissa Altman, award-winning author and longtime editor, will publish her newest book Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create. Permission is a master course, not only on how to craft memoir, but how to begin and keep going when you’ve been told you can’t, and how to give yourself permission to transcend the fear that keeps vital stories from being written.