About Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne is a writer whose nonfiction has been published in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The New Republic and Amherst Magazine, among other venues. Her short fiction has appeared in Broad River Review and Barren Magazine. Her debut novel, Holding On To Nothing (Blair, 2019), was an OkraPick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Association and won a Gold Medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Best Regional Fiction from the South. She is a graduate of Amherst College and Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. She is an East Tennessee native and mother of four children.
During this pandemic, I have traveled, with nary a mask in sight, to the Highlands of Scotland, an island in Tahiti and, most recently, a mountainside village in Jamaica. Tamp down that frisson of anger you feel—I’m speaking, of course,…
Do I actually want another baby? Or am I just so full of fear over the prospective publication of my debut novel that I want the purity of focus that caring for a newborn affords? I love babies. Always have….
Back when my children were babies, they got to an age where people suggested a “lovey,” a transitional object, meant to give the little guys something to snuggle with that isn’t my husband, me, or more accurately, my boobs. Often,…
Once again, I find myself gestating two babies: my book and an actual human child, currently two weeks out from D-Day. This happened two years ago too, smack in the middle of the Novel Incubator. I went to class one…
Shh. Please be quiet. I am killing someone right now and I need to concentrate. This is most definitely pre-meditated – I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. I love her, I really do, but I can’t be around her…