Stephen Elliott (born December 3, 1971) is an American writer, editor, and filmmaker currently living in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

who has written and published seven books and directed two films. He is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the online literary magazine ''

The Rumpus ''The Rumpus'' is an online literary magazine launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as original fiction and poetry. The site runs two subscription-base ...

''. In December 2014, he became senior editor at ''Epic Magazine''.

Background and education

Elliott grew up in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. In his adolescence he was made a ward of the court and placed in several group homes. He attended Mather High School and the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

, and went on to receive his master's degree in cinema studies from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Chart ...

in 1996. In 2001, he was awarded the

Stegner Fellowship The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), a historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford faculty m ...

from Stanford University, given to emerging writers in fiction and poetry. He was then the Marsh McCall lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University.Stanford University
/ref> Elliott is Jewish on his father's side.

Books and journalism

Elliott went on the campaign trail and wrote a book about the 2004 U.S. presidential race, ''Looking Forward to It: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About It and Love the American Electoral Process''. His novel '' Happy Baby'', edited by

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

and co-published by

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. Initially publishing the literary journal'' Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', the company has moved to ...

and MacAdam/Cage, was released in February 2004. The paperback of ''Happy Baby'' was published by Picador in January 2005. His book ''My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up'' is a collection of S&M erotica, sometimes referred to as a sexual memoir, published by

Cleis Press Cleis Press is an American independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It later moved to S ...

in 2006. In April 2007, he published an essay about his experiment of not using the Internet for one month, writing: "I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out." In 2008, he started ''The Rumpus'', an online cultural commentary site. In 2009, he published a true-crime memoir about the

Hans Reiser Hans Reiser (born December 19, 1963) is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer. In April 2008, Reiser was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, who disappeared in September 2006. He subseq ...

murder trial called ''The Adderall Diaries'', which was adapted into the 2015 film of the same name, in which

James Franco James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor and filmmaker. For his role in '' 127 Hours'' (2010), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Franco is known for his roles in films, such as Sam Raimi's ''Spider- ...

played Elliott.

Films

In 2012, Elliott directed the film '' About Cherry'', based on a script written by Lorelei Lee and himself. The film starred Ashley Hinshaw,

and Dev Patel, and debuted at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival. In December 2012, Elliott raised the funds via Kickstarter to shoot his second film, '' Happy Baby'', based on his novel of the same name. Production was completed on July 7, 2013 and the movie was released in 2016.

Published works

;Novels *''Jones Inn'' (1998) *''A Life Without Consequences'' (2001) *''What It Means to Love you'' (2002) *'' Happy Baby'' (2004) ;Essays and Non-fiction *''Looking Forward to It: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process'' (2004) *''The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder'' (2009) *''Sometimes I Think About It: Essays'' (2017) ;Short story collections *''My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up'' (2006) ;Films *'' About Cherry'' (2012) *''Happy Baby'' (2016) *''After Adderall'' (2016)

Awards

*2001

Personal life and allegations of sexual abuse

In November 2015, Claire Vaye Watkins published an essay in

Tin House ''Tin House'' is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Portland publisher Win McCormack originally conceived the idea for a literary magazine called ''Tin House'' in the summer of 1998. He enlisted Holly MacArt ...

describing an incident where Elliott asked if he could sleep in her bed and left her uncomfortable. In 2017, Elliot was included on the " Shitty Media Men" list, a crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet containing allegations of sexual misconduct against men in the media industry. The allegations against Elliott included "rape accusations, sexual harassment” and “coercion". In October 2018, Elliot filed a lawsuit against the person who started the spreadsheet, journalist Moira Donegan. After Elliott filed the suit against Donegan, according to ''

The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...

'', former Rumpus managing editor Lyz Lenz accused Elliott of groping her and described on Twitter an incident where Elliott "hounded" her about watching a movie in his hotel room. However the ''Daily Beast'' does not quote Lenz as saying Elliott groped her and Lenz' tweets linked in the ''Daily Beast'' article have since been deleted. In an article in The Stranger some of the accusations by Lyz Lenz were called into question. He frequents an SM club called Eureka in Tokyo where partakes in masochistic play.

References

External links

* *
"Nude Awakening"
- excerpt from ''My Girlfriend Comes to the City'' on Salon.com
"Innocence Abroad"
- story from

Nerve.com ''Nerve'' or Nerve.com, was an American online magazine dedicated to sexual topics, relationships and culture. Founded by Rufus Griscom and Genevieve Field, Nerve published articles and photography on its website and several books, in partnership w ...

Review of "The Adderall Diaries in The Las Vegas Weekly"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elliott, Stephen 1971 births Living people American male writers University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Northwestern University School of Communication alumni Mather High School alumni BDSM writers