Elizabeth Geoghegan was born in New York, raised in the Midwest, and has spent the last two decades living in Rome. She received her MFA in Fiction from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and her MA in Creative Writing from The University of Colorado at Boulder where renowned writer Lucia Berlin was her mentor. Geoghegan is the author of the story collection eightball, and the best-selling flash memoir The Marco Chronicles. Her writing has appeared in anthologies, magazines, and literary journals such as The Paris Review, TIME, The Best Travel Writing. El Pais, Words Without Borders, BOMB, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Research:
An avid traveler, storyteller, and photographer, Geoghegan’s writing confronts the fault-line between geography and intimacy. Her fields of interest are the Creative Process, Fiction Writing, and Creative Nonfiction, such as Travel Writing, Memoir, and hybrid forms that blur the boundaries between autobiography and fiction. Her research pays particular attention to Contemporary Short Fiction, 20th Century Modernist Fiction, Expatriate Writers, the Literature of Exile, and the work of the two seminal short story writers Flannery O’Connor and Lucia Berlin.
Courses taught:
Professor Geoghegan specializes in the following Creative Writing workshops: Fiction Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Mixed Genre, Writing the Eternal City, and Travel Writing. She also teaches the English Literature and Creative Writing fusion course: How to Read Like a Writer, as well as Study of the Works of a Single Modern Writer: Hemingway, Geoghegan’s teaching philosophy stems from her belief that we all have stories to tell and that it is simply a matter of finding the right form or shape to best contain that story’s essence. She is devoted to close reading and the craft of building stories from the ground up, just as an architect might approach her design for a home, whether minimalist or elaborate. Geoghegan’s courses offer challenging and unexpected assignments in an intimate, artistic environment.
