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Elissa is fairly certain that she was born holding a crayon in her hand. She was an artist and a storyteller long before she knew the meaning of those words and spent her childhood drawing, painting, reading, writing, dreaming, inventing, making characters and objects and creating the worlds in which those things lived. Always lost in an art project or story, it was fitting that her first HS job was working in the Children’s Department of her local library. The illustrated worlds jumped off the page differently than they had come alive to her as a child – she wanted to know more about the process behind each story and the people behind the words and art, and she dreamed of one day creating her own books. She taught art for fifteen years from the elementary to the HS Advanced Placement Art level and is now pursuing her dream of writing and illustrating picture books. 

 

When she isn’t working on a story, you can find her absorbing, appreciating and collecting all the magical moments that she can with her daughter, a constant source of inspiration and creative energy. Elissa is an active member of Storyteller Academy and SCBWI and was selected as a 2023 Finalist in the Storyteller Academy Showcase.