In addition to piecing together a few slim collections of her short fictions, Eliezra (pronounced Ellie-Ezra) Schaffzin is at work on several longer literary projects, including a novel about two teenage girls in love, college applications, Beethoven’s choral music, religious apocalypticism, and experimental aerial drones, and a fantastical story of the first American department stores; her early research for the latter project was supported by a fellowship at the New-York Historical Society (whose name is in fact hyphenated: see here).
Schaffzin is a recipient of the Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction, and her story “Seesaw” was selected as the second-place winner of the Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction. Her tiny collection of tiny tales, Tiny Creatures, will be published by Ethel in July 2024 as an illustrated mini-book. Tiny Creatures was named a finalist in both the 2021 Masters Review Chapbook Open (selected by author Matt Bell) and the 2022 New Rivers Press Chapbook Contest, and one of its tiny stories (“Triptych: Little Deities”) was selected as the 2022 winner of the Los Angeles Review Award for Flash Fiction. Another of the collection’s stories, this one about a tiny tardigrade, was chosen as a finalist for the inaugural SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction, and Schaffzin was invited to guest edit at SmokeLong shortly afterward; you can read the Guest Editor interview here.
Originally from Philadelphia, she earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University and an MFA from the University of Florida, and she has taught writing at Harvard University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
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Summer 2024 News:
If you happen to be in Philly on August 18, come on over to A Novel Idea bookstore on East Passyunk at 3pm for the official launch of Tiny Creatures, forthcoming from Ethel, a micro-press. Four Philly-based Ethel authors will also read from their work, lots of beautiful Ethel books will be on display (and available for purchase), and the whole event will take place amid a menagerie of papier mâché creations by Tiny Creatures illustrator Stephen Schaffzin. You can also pick up a copy of his new title for quirky kids, A Cownting Book. (Sneak preview here!)