About Elizabeth Rusch


Elizabeth Rusch is an award-winning magazine writer and children’s book author. She writes both fiction and nonfiction for children and adults in the areas of science, art, humor, child development, health, the environment, sports, outdoors, travel, and social issues — anything that catches her fancy.

Elizabeth Rusch’s first children’ book, Generation Fix, was a Smithsonian magazine Notable Children’s Book and a finalist for the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award and the Oregon Book Award. Will It Blow?: Become a Volcano Detective at Mount St. Helens was named a Natural History magazine best book for young readers, a Washington Reads pick, and a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. The Planet Hunter: The story behind what happened to Pluto was also finalist for the Oregon Book Award and her book A Day with No Crayons won the OBA’s Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award in Children’s Literature.

As an award-winning freelance writer and former managing editor of Teacher magazine, editor-in-chief of PointsBeyond.com, and contributing editor to Child and Fit Pregnancy, Rusch has published more than 100 articles in numerous national magazines for children and adults. Her publishing credits include Muse, Read, American Girl, Harper’s, Mother Jones, Smithsonian, Parenting, Smithsonian, Backpacker, and Portland Monthly, among many others.

Her literary awards include the Kay Snow Literary Award, a Maggie Award, and an Oregon Literary Fellowship, among others.

She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children.

Here’s how Liz describes a good writing day: “A good writing day for me starts with a run (to get my blood moving) and eggs (to keep me from the excuse that I am hungry). I do my best writing in the Sterling Writers Room in the central library downtown. As I ride the streetcar to the library, I slip into an almost meditative state -- not thinking about the writing I am going to do deliberately but letting my mind wander around. The writers' room has four large bare oak desks with a simple lamp on each. It's so quiet I can hear a small voice inside, the writer's voice. Even if I don't hear it, I start writing. I write and write and I don't look up until I feel a bit cotton-headed and stiff, like I have to stretch. Two hours have passed like two minutes. On a good day, even if I don't read over what I have written, I have a sense that somewhere in the work is something good.”

 

 

Funny But True 

Elizabeth Rusch was almost born in a taxicab in the Queens-Midtown tunnel in New York City. Her mother made it to the delivery room of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the nick of time on October 14, 1966.

She is the third child of six, three boys and three girls, just like the Brady Bunch. Her brother Mike, older by one year, had a hard time pronouncing Elizabeth and could only sputter out Li-li, so her nickname became Lili.

(She was Lili until she bloomed into an ornery middle school student and insisted that everyone call her Liz. She sticks to her guns on this one, though her husband got away with calling her Liver once.)

Lili went to a small Catholic elementary school called St. Mary’s in Greenville, South Carolina, complete with knuckle-wrapping nuns in black habits. Little Lili loved staring out the window, chasing boys all over the concrete playground, and sitting under the shade of the pecan tree, nibbling on the nuts. She was an avid reader, but not a great student at first. (A-F grades were not-too-sneakily disguised as E for Excellent, V for Very Good, G for Good, S for Satisfactory, and U for Unsatisfactory. Little Lili got a few too many Ss and Us.)

One of her earliest attempts at writing was a gripping story of two girls racing horses, suspiciously named Lili (her own name) and Sharon (her little sister’s name). To this day, Lili does not know why she let Sharon win. Maybe she knew even then that in any good story the underdog must prevail.

Before becoming a writer, Lili was a playwright. Though she didn’t actually “wright.” She and her best friend Karen Anderson made up and performed plays. Their longest running series was the Carter Girls, about two clever girl detectives. (She also performed in local productions of Tom Sawyer, Oliver and Oedipus Rex.)

When her family moved to Guilford, Connecticut in the sixth grade, Lili, now Liz, started to pay attention and actually like school. She distinctly remembers thinking how interesting her classes were. She read legal cases and built a model city in Social Studies, peered into a telescope in Science, and wrote poetry in English class. Her favorite subjects went from recess to English, Social Studies, and Science. Once she got past adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, she liked Math, too. (She still finds that almost everything in this wide world interests her.)

Liz went to high school, blah, blah, blah, college at Duke, party, study, party, then landed this amazing job as part of the start-up staff for a new national magazine for teachers. She was part of creating the magazine: the look-and-feel, the content, the marketing plan, even the budget. The magazine got the greenlight, and the editor hired editors and writers from top magazines across the country. When Teacher Magazine began publication in 1989, the big question was: What are we going to do with Liz?

Since Liz did not have a writing degree (she majored in Economics in college) or any real experience writing, she was made the Copy Editor. When offered the position, she told her boss that she was terrible at spelling and grammar. His jaw dropped.  But she promised to look everything up, and managed not to get fired. And that’s how her writing career really began.