Elizabeth Berg

Berg A former nurse with a caretaker’s eye for the details of needing and being needed, best-selling author Elizabeth Berg doesn’t shy from the “women’s writer” association. She writes with humor and sympathy about the small earthquakes upending women’s lives and their extraordinary, human ways of setting things right again.

Berg made her mark as a promising writer with the publication of her first novel, Durable Goods, a tough but tender first novel, named Best Book of the Year by the American Library Association (ALA). Her most recent book, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation is a compelling anthology of short fiction, including eleven never-before-published pieces.

Berg’s writing is an intelligent foray into the forces that shape ordinary people’s lives -- especially women’s lives -- and her exploration of the infinite resilience of the human spirit. A nurse for ten years before publishing her first book, she accumulated an endless store of observations related to sickness, healing, and the emotional toll that health crises take on people.

Her novels Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year. Talk Before Sleep was an ABBY (American Booksellers Book of the Year) finalist, a New York Times best seller, and a national best seller. The Pull of the Moon, Range of Motion, What We Keep, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along also were national best sellers. And, in 1997, Berg won the NEBA (New England Book Award) Award in fiction.