Elizabeth Berg (born December 2, 1948) is an American
novelist.
Berg was born in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, and lived in
Boston prior to her residence in
Chicago. She studied English and Humanities at the
University of Minnesota, but later ended up with a nursing degree [1][2][clarification needed]. Her writing career started when she won an essay contest in Parents magazine. Since her
debut novel in 1993, her novels have sold in large numbers and have received several awards and nominations, even though some critics have tagged them as sentimental.[3] She won the New England Book Awards in 1997.[4]
The three novels Durable Goods, Joy School, and True to Form form a trilogy about the 12-year-old Katie Nash, in part based on the author's own experience as a daughter in a military family. Most recently, her essay "The Pretend Knitter" appears in the anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, published by
W. W. Norton & Company in November 2013.
Bibliography
Family traditions: celebrations for holidays and everyday (1992), illustrations by Robert Roth
Durable Goods (1993), selected as
ALA Best Books of the Year
Talk Before Sleep (1994), highlighting the fight against
breast cancer
Range of Motion (1995)
The Pull of the Moon (1996)
Joy School (1997), selected among the
ALA 1998 Best Books for Young Adults[5]
What We Keep (1998)
Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True (1999), non-fiction
Until the Real Thing Comes Along (1999), about a woman's love for a gay man