Born in Canada, Zetta Elliott earned her PhD in American Studies from NYU in 2003. She has taught at Ohio University, Louisiana State University, Mount Holyoke College, Hunter College, and Bard High School Early College.
She won the 2005 Honor Award in Lee & Low Books' New Voices Contest, and her picture book, Bird, was published in October 2008. Her first play, Nothing but a Woman, was a finalist in the Chicago Dramatists' Many Voices Project (2006). Her fourth full-length play, Connor's Boy, was staged in January 2008 as part of two new play festivals: in Cleveland, OH as part of Karamu House's R. Joyce Whitley Festival of New Plays ARENAFEST, and in New York City as part of Maieutic Theatre Works' Newborn Festival. She currently [2012] lives in Brooklyn.
Zetta Elliott on Speculative Fiction +
the Future of Publishing
Ship
of Souls
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Reading level: Ages 11 and up
Paperback: 132 pages
Publisher: AmazonEncore (February 28, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1612182682
ISBN-13: 978-1612182681
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
When Dmitri, an 11-year-old bird watcher and math whiz, loses his mother
to breast cancer, he is taken in by Mrs. Martin, an elderly white woman.
Unaccustomed to the company of kids his own age, D struggles at school and
feels like an outcast until a series of unexpected events changes the course
of his life.
First, D is asked to tutor the school’s basketball star, Hakeem, who will
get benched unless his grades improve. Against the odds, the two boys soon
realize they have something in common: they are both taunted by kids at
school, and they both have a crush on Nyla, a beautiful but fierce
eighth-grade girl. Then Nyla adopts D and invites him to join her entourage
of “freaks.” Finally, D discovers an injured bird and brings it home from
the park.
D is stunned when the strange bird speaks to him and reveals that she is
really a guiding spirit that has been held hostage by ghost soldiers who
died in Brooklyn at the start of the American Revolution. As Nuru’s chosen
host, D must carry her from Brooklyn to the African Burial Ground in lower
Manhattan, but the ghost soldiers won’t surrender their prize without a
fight.
With the help of Hakeem and Nyla, D battles the Nether Beings who lurk
underground, feeding off centuries of rage and pain. But it takes an
unexpected ally to help the trio reach the ship that will deliver the
innocent souls of the dead back to Nuru’s realm. An urban fantasy infused
with contemporary issues and historical facts, Ship of Souls will keep teen
readers gripped until the very end.
A
Wish After Midnight
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Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: AmazonEncore (February 16, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0982555059
ISBN-13: 978-0982555057
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
Genna is a fifteen-year-old girl who wants out of her tough Brooklyn
neighborhood. But she gets more than she bargained for when a wish gone awry
transports her back in time. Facing the perilous realities of Civil War–era
Brooklyn, Genna must use all her wits to survive. In the tradition of
Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, A Wish
After Midnight is the affecting and inspiring tale of a fearless young
woman’s fight to hold on to her individuality and her humanity in two
different worlds.
Bird
Click to order via Amazon
Reading level: Ages 7 and up
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Lee & Low Books (October 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 160060241X
ISBN-13: 978-1600602412
Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.6 x 0.4 inches
From Publishers Weekly
In a promising debut for both Elliott and Strickland, this picture book
tells a poignant story about a boy whose loving family, friends and a gift
for drawing help him navigate difficult emotions surrounding the deaths of
his grandfather and drug-addicted brother. A complicated weaving of
impressive watercolor, gouache, charcoal and ink drawings amplifies the
metaphors and action of the poetic text as it combines black-and-white with
color. Never straying from believable language in casting Mehkai, the child,
as narrator, Elliott skillfully unfolds the sequence of events. Both art and
text nimbly play with Mehkai's nickname, Bird, beginning with the image of a
shivering bird that, like his brother, seems to be blown away by a gust of
wind, and continuing with Uncle Son's attempt to explain the brother's
death:
You can fix a broken wing with a splint,
and a bird can fly again
But you can't fix a broken soul.
Stranger
in the Family
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Paperback: 202 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (March 5, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1441476431
ISBN-13: 978-1441476432
Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.4 inches
Stranger in the Family is a mixed-media memoir that examines the shifting
terrain upon which we negotiate race, kinship, and identity. When my father
died of cancer in the spring of 2004, I accepted an offer to teach in the
tiny east African country of Djibouti. While abroad, I reflected upon the
complicated concept of diaspora, and the alienation I sometimes felt as a
foreigner brought to mind a hurtful remark my father once directed at me:
"You're a stranger in this family." When my teaching assignment in Djibouti
ended prematurely, I returned to Toronto and wrote a collection of essays to
more closely examine my "outsider" role within my family and my native land.
Stranger in the Family uses prose, photography, short stories, and poetry to
trace my evolution as a black woman, a writer, a daughter, and a Canadian.
One-Act Plays
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Paperback: 84 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (July 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1448639085
ISBN-13: 978-1448639083
Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2 inches
Girl/Power: While in the custody of Child Protective Services, two underage
girls compare their relationships with the men accused of exploiting them.
Brotherhood: Upon his release from prison, Von returns to his foster
mother's home hoping to build a new life with the remnants of his family.
But with the house on the brink of foreclosure, Von must confront the forces
of change that have transformed the world he left behind. Deluged: A young
woman conducting research on lynching in Louisiana finds herself swept up in
a hurricane and dropped onto a plantation off the Mississippi River. Men of
All Work: Four black male celebrities meet in "the green room" and share the
trials and triumphs they have encountered trying to "make it" in the
entertainment industry.
Three Plays
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Paperback: 198 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (March 11, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1441486216
ISBN-13: 978-1441486219
Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.4 inches
CONNOR'S BOY: Connor, a successful artist and transracial adoptee, commits suicide after being accused of abusing his beloved son. Connor's death forces the people who loved him to confront each other, the past, and the guilt that fuels their fierce struggle over his child.
MOTHER LOAD: A black woman filmmaker in her mid-thirties, Liv, decides to attend her estranged mother's sixtieth birthday party. Her mother, Cleo, is a prolific, celebrated playwright. Liv arrives determined to triumphantly disclose her pregnancy, but instead she must confront the fact that Cleo is dying of uterine cancer.
BEAST: DeMarcus Gaines, a famous basketball player, has been implicated in a shooting that may end his career; these charges are just the latest in a string of accusations leveled against the young star, including rape. His family, from whom he has been estranged, decides to rally around DeMarcus, but only after he gives a full and honest account of his actions.
Ten-Minute Plays
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Paperback: 58 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (March 5, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1441486275
ISBN-13: 978-1441486271
Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.1 inches
STASH: Charity, a young woman is accused of killing and castrating her abusive father.
QUALITY: Two white women do laundry while discussing the challenges of living in a neighborhood that is gradually being gentrified.
INNOCENTS: Three black women gather behind a courthouse in the South to reflect on their loss of innocence.
SELF/PRESERVATION: A white couple, desperate to save their home from eminent domain, falsely claims their cellar was once part of the Underground Railroad.
HER VOW: After miraculously recovering from a coma, Lila attacks life with a vigor that frightens and alienates her devoted husband, Jerome.
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