Elissa Schappell is the author of two books of fiction, most recently Blueprints for Building Better Girls, which was chosen as one of the “Best Books of the Year” by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and O Magazine, and Use Me, runner up for the PEN Hemingway award, a New York Times "Notable Book" and a Los Angeles Times, "Best Book of the Year”.

She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of two anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. Her fiction, non-fiction and essays have appeared in publications including, The Paris Review, Bomb, The New York Times Book Review and SPIN as well as anthologies such as, The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, The Future Dictionary of America, Bound to Last and Cooking & Stealing. Currently, she is a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair, and a Founding-editor, now Editor-at-Large of Tin House. She teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University, NYU and the low-residency MFA program at Queens, in Charlotte, N.C. She lives in Brooklyn.