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Elizabeth Tallent

Biography

Elizabeth Tallent

Elizabeth Tallent, author of a novel and four story collections, has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Tin House and ZYZZYVA, as well as in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, O. Henry Prize and Pushcart Prize award anthologies. She teaches in Stanford’s Creative Writing Program and lives with her wife, an antiques dealer, on the Mendocino Coast.

Elizabeth Tallent

Books by Elizabeth Tallent

Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
by Elizabeth Tallent - Memoir, Nonfiction

Elizabeth Tallent’s story begins in a hospital in mid-1950s suburban Washington, D.C., when her mother refuses to hold her newborn daughter, shocking behavior that baffles the nurses. Imagining her mother’s perfectionist ideal at this critical moment, Elizabeth moves back and forth in time, juxtaposing moments in the past with the present in this innovative and spellbinding narrative. She traces her journey from her early years in which she perceived herself as “the child whose flaws let disaster into an otherwise perfect family,” to her adulthood, when perfectionism came to affect everything. As she raises her son and pursues an important psychoanalysis, Elizabeth grapples with the ferocious desire for perfection, which has shaped her personal life and writing life.