Elana Michelson

Elana Michelson is a native New Yorker now living in the Hudson Valley, where she writes, reads, gardens, and volunteers with local social justice organizations. After thirty-five years as a professor, she has put down scholarship in favor of writing murder mysteries.

Lucky to be born into a family of social activists, Elana grew up in the civil rights and peace movements, claimed feminism as a birthright, and has in recent years worked hard as an advocate for immigrants. Her wife Penny is a photographer, author, and educator currently working in environmental activism.

Elana earned a PhD in English literature, but her long career as a professor, scholar, and speaker focused on recognizing the knowledge of people whose know-how was undervalued – women, workers, people of color, and people of the Global South. Her work as a workshop leader and consultant brought her to the UK, the Middle East, and, most importantly, South Africa.

But Elana’s love of literature never left her. Part of the Solution brings together a Bob Dylan-quoting, Victorian novel-reading heroine, a wayward community committed to social justice, and the guilty pleasures of sneaking in a murder mystery when one is supposed to be reading something “serious.”