Elise Broach

Elise Broach is the author of more than twenty award-winning books for children, ranging from board books and picture books to young adult novels. Her middle-grade mystery, Masterpiece, was a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the E. B. White Read-Aloud Award of the Association of Booksellers for Children, and her picture book When Dinosaurs Came with Everything was named Time Magazine’s#1 Children’s Book of the Year. Her books have won numerous awards and appeared on more than a dozen state reading lists. Elise lives in the woods of Connecticut and teaches creative writing at Yale University. She loves talking to school children of all ages about the writing process, story structure, and how to write mysteries.

Elise’s school visits consist of 50-minute presentations tailored to the age and reading interests of the audience. For grades K-2, she gives a presentation called “From Idea to Story,” which focuses on the path from initial inspiration to finished book, using one or two of her picture books as examples. This presentation covers where we get our ideas, how to create memorable characters, the key parts of a story, the illustration process, and the importance of revision.

For grades 3-5 and 6-8, Elise gives a presentation on mystery-writing that focuses on the elements of a good mystery, building suspense, the importance of research, and the revision process. This presentation can be tailored to a particular book – Masterpiece, Shakespeare’s Secret, the Superstition Mountain trilogy, or The Wolf Keepers– if large numbers of students have read a single title.

Elise also offers writer-in-residence programs (multiple days of intensive writing instruction), writing workshops, and special presentations designed for schools participating in a One School, One Book program using Masterpiece(and its companion series for younger grades, The Masterpiece Adventures). She is happy to schedule a virtual discussion/Q&A for students who have read a particular book.

A few of Elise’s books