Elizabeth Benedict is a best-selling novelist, journalist, teacher of creative writing, editor and writing coach. She has published five acclaimed novels including the national bestseller, Almost, and the National Book Award finalist, Slow Dancing, authored the classic book on writing about sex in fiction, The Joy of Writing Sex, in print for 25 years. Her personal essays have been selected as ?Notable? in four editions of Best American Essays. She has written reviews and articles for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire, Real Simple, and Daedalus, and been a regular contributor to Japanese Playboy, Huffington Post and Salmagundi, writing on sexual politics, money, and literature, and on figures from Monica Lewinsky to British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.

She conceived of and edited three prominent anthologies, including the New York Times Bestseller, What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most (2013); Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives; and Me, My Hair, and I: 27 Women Untangle an Obsession(2015). Her books are featured regularly in reviews and interviews on All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and many other public radio shows, including the BBC's "Women's Hour," and Australia Public Radio. She has taught creative writing at Princeton, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Columbia, and is on the Fiction Faculty at the New York State Summer Writers Institute.