Stephen Elliott (author)

Elliott grew up in Chicago. In his adolescence he was made a ward of the court{{cite web|title=Stories of a troubled man |work=Chicago Tribune |first=Ellen|last=Warren |url =http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-050427elliott,0,5804124.story |date=March 18, 2005|accessdate =January 11, 2011}} and placed in several group homes.

He attended Mather High School and the University of Illinois, and went on to receive his master's degree in cinema studies from Northwestern University in 1996.{{cite web |last=Spencer |first=Ruth |date=October 11, 2018 |title=Stephen Elliott Sues Moira Donegan, Creator of Shitty Media Men List |url=https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/stephen-elliott-sues-moira-donegan.html |accessdate=October 11, 2018 |work=The Cut}} In 2001, he was awarded the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, given to emerging writers in fiction and poetry. He was then the Marsh McCall lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University.[http://events.stanford.edu/events/42/4262/ Stanford University] Elliott is Jewish on his father's side.{{cite web |url=http://orjewishlife.com/stephen-elliotts-incredible-journey/ |title = Stephen Elliott's Incredible Journey {{!}} Oregon Jewish Life| date=April 24, 2015 }}

Elliott went on the campaign trail and wrote a book about the 2004 U.S. presidential race, Looking Forward to It: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About It and Love the American Electoral Process.Keith Gessen, "Boys on the Bus," New York Magazine, May 21, 2005. His novel Happy Baby, edited by Dave Eggers and co-published by McSweeney's and MacAdam/Cage, was released in February 2004. The paperback of Happy Baby was published by Picador in January 2005. His book My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up is a collection of S&M erotica, sometimes referred to as a sexual memoir, published by Cleis Press in 2006.

In April 2007, he published an essay about his experiment of not using the Internet for one month, writing: "I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out."{{cite news|url=http://www.pw.org/content/surviving_month_without_internet|title=Surviving a Month Without Internet | work=Poets and Writers|last=Elliott|first=Stephen}}

In 2008, he started The Rumpus, an online cultural commentary site.[http://therumpus.net/ The Rumpus], accessed March 19, 2015

In 2009, he published a true-crime memoir about the Hans Reiser murder trial called The Adderall Diaries, which was adapted into the 2015 film of the same name, in which James Franco played Elliott.

In 2012, Elliott directed the film About Cherry, based on a script written by Lorelei Lee and himself. The film starred Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco and Dev Patel, and debuted at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival.

In December 2012, Elliott raised the funds via Kickstarter to shoot his second film, Happy Baby, based on his novel of the same name. Production was completed on July 7, 2013[https://web.archive.org/web/20141222151817/http://happybabymovie.net/ Happy Baby Movie Website (archived)] and the movie was released in 2016.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3039732/ Happy Baby on IMDB]

;Novels

• Jones Inn (1998)
• A Life Without Consequences (2001)
• What It Means to Love you (2002)
• Happy Baby (2004)

;Essays and Non-fiction

• Looking Forward to It: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process (2004)
• The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder (2009)
• Sometimes I Think About It: Essays (2017)

;Short story collections

• My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up (2006)

;Films

• About Cherry (2012)
• Happy Baby (2016)
• After Adderall (2016)

• 2001 Stegner Fellowship

In November 2015, Claire Vaye Watkins published an essay in Tin House describing an incident where Elliott asked repeatedly, while visiting her program as a guest writer, if he could sleep in her bed, and later sent out a newsletter describing the incident in a way that left her feeling shamed for his own behavior.{{Cite news|url=https://tinhouse.com/on-pandering/|title=On Pandering {{!}} Tin House|date=November 23, 2015|work=Tin House|access-date=October 24, 2018|language=en-US}} In 2017, Elliott was included on the "Shitty Media Men" list, a crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet containing allegations of sexual misconduct against men in the media industry.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/style/stephen-elliott-moira-donegan-media-men-list.html|title=Writer Who Appeared on 'Media Men' List Sues Its Creators|work=The New York Times |date=October 12, 2018 |access-date=October 12, 2018|language=en|last1=Bromwich |first1=Jonah Engel }} The allegations against Elliott included "rape accusations, sexual harassment" and "coercion". In October 2018, Elliott filed a lawsuit against the person who started the spreadsheet, journalist Moira Donegan.{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/12/creator-of-notorious-media-men-list-of-anonymous-sexual-accusations-is-sued-by-writer-who-says-it-nearly-ruined-him/|title=Creator of notorious 'Media Men' list of anonymous sexual accusations is sued by writer who says it nearly ruined him|newspaper=Washington Post|language=en|access-date=October 12, 2018}} In March 2023, Elliott reached a settlement with Donegan for a six figure sum.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/style/media-men-list-settlement-moira-donegan.html|title='Media Men' Lawsuit Ends in a Settlement|newspaper=New York Times|date=March 6, 2023 |language=en|access-date=March 10, 2023|last1=Testa |first1=Jessica }}

After Elliott filed the suit against Donegan, according to The Daily Beast, former Rumpus managing editor Lyz Lenz accused Elliott of groping her and described on Twitter an incident where Elliott "hounded" her about watching a movie in his hotel room. However the Daily Beast does not quote Lenz as saying Elliott groped her, and Lenz's tweets linked in the Daily Beast article have since been deleted.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/opinion/stephen-elliott-moira-donegan-media-men.html|title=Opinion {{!}} What Do You Do When You Are Anonymously Accused of Rape?|work=The New York Times |date=October 13, 2018 |access-date=October 24, 2018|language=en|last1=Weiss |first1=Bari }}{{cite web |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/shitty-media-man-stephen-elliott-sues-to-dox-women |title='Sh*tty Media Man' Stephen Elliott Sues to Dox Women |last=Weill |first=Kelly |date=October 12, 2018 |website=Daily Beast |access-date=December 23, 2019 |quote=Lenz, who has gone on to a writing career of her own, accused Elliott of groping and harassing her. "Remember when I was an unpaid editor at your magazine and we met at AWP where you invited me up to your room to watch a movie and I declined?" Lenz tweeted. "But you didn't take no for an answer. You hounded me. I hid under a table."}} In an article in The Stranger, some of the accusations by Lenz were called into question. He frequents a Tokyo S&M club called Eureka, where he partakes in masochistic play.{{Cite news|url=https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/10/09/33615110/anonymous-uw-students-publish-rape-accusations-online-what-could-go-wrong/|title=Anonymous UW Students Publish Rape Accusations Online. What Could Go Wrong?|language=en}}

{{reflist}}

• {{Official website}}
• {{IMDb name|4107260|Stephen Elliott}}
• [http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/11/29/stripper_year/ "Nude Awakening"] - excerpt from My Girlfriend Comes to the City on Salon.com
• [http://www.nerve.com/fiction/elliot/innocenceabroad/ "Innocence Abroad"] - story from Nerve.com
• [http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/nov/11/the-adderall-diaries/ Review of "The Adderall Diaries in The Las Vegas Weekly"]

{{Authority control}}

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Category:1971 births

Category:Living people

Category:American male writers

Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni

Category:Place of birth missing (living people)

Category:Northwestern University School of Communication alumni

Category:Mather High School alumni

Category:BDSM writers

Category:False allegations of sex crimes