Elizabeth Thomson

ELIZABETH (LIZ) THOMSON is a widely published author, journalist, and sometime broadcaster. Her many books include Joan Baez: The Last Leaf, the much-acclaimed biography of the celebrated musician, artist, and activist, praised by Mojo and Americana UK as “definitive.” Based on numerous interviews with its subject, and a first-hand account of recording sessions, the biography was honoured for its Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research at the 2021 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards. Joan Baez: The Last Leaf is published internationally in English by Palazzo/Gemini Books Group. A French translation is available from Castor Astral, and the Turkish from Agora Kitaplığı. Other translations are in train.

Elizabeth is also the revising editor of No Direction: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton, the New York Times journalist whose 1961 review is credited with launching Dylan’s career. Elizabeth’s 2011 edition restored 25,000-plus words of Shelton’s manuscript, cut from the original 1986 edition which the author described as “much mauled” and “abridged over troubled waters”. It was published in the UK by Omnibus Press and by Backbeat/Hal Leonard in the US, Hardie Grant in Australia, and Edel in Germany, as well as in Portuguese, Korean and other translations. It is now a collector’s item, the only first-hand account of Dylan’s formative years in Greenwich Village. Shelton was the only journalist to interview Dylan’s parents.

Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, an illustrated edition, the text abridged from the 225,000 words of the 2011 edition but retaining crucial material missing from the original 1986 edition, was published in 2021 with a new foreword and afterword, and republished in 2023 with a new afterword. Currently available editions include Gemini Books (UK/US/Canada), Flammarion France, Pangea, Czech Republic.

A contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, Elizabeth Thomson is the editor (with David Gutman) of critical anthologies on John Lennon, Bob Dylan and David Bowie (all available from Da Capo Editions), and the author of a 40-year celebration of Chickenshed (Elliott & Thompson), the ground-breaking London-based theatre company. She is currently at work on a biography of Betsy Siggins, godmother to the Boston-Cambridge folk scene.

A music graduate of the University of Liverpool, Elizabeth has been a Visiting Fellow of the Open University Sixties Research Group. She is also the founder and joint artistic director of The Village Trip, an annual festival celebrating the culture and community of New York’s Greenwich Village and the East Village.