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Elissa Brent Weisman grew up on Long Island, New York in a Jewish community and then attended Johns Hopkins College
in Baltimore where she met her future husband and where she ended up teaching. She has been writing, “ever since I could pick up a pencil.” She wrote her first novel, “The Ryland Revolt,” when she was 10 and tried to get it published but to no avail. She kept writing and is now best known for her Nerd Camp series which features Gabe, a probable nerd, who has the summer of his life at camp. It’s a summer filled with crazy bunkmates, a mysterious lice epidemic, a karaoke showdown, an intense Color War, and a midnight journey to Dead Man’s Island.
“I always imagine that my characters are Jewish,” said Weissman who as a child attended both Hebrew School and the local public school. This comes out in small references in her books, usually in cultural situations or normal conversation. For example, in “Standing for Socks” and “The Short Seller,” the use of grandparent names, holidays, or an upcoming bar mitzvah give the clues, but they are not a major part of the story. The exception is Weissman’s eighth children’s book, The Length of a String, which follows the quest of a now 12-year-old black girl, adopted as an infant by a Baltimore Jewish family, to find her birth family.
Weissman’s books have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, NPR’s “Here and Now,” and more. She finally published The Ryland Revolt (first chapter only) when she included it in her anthology titled, Our Story Begins. It’s a compilation of the stories that, now famous children’s authors and illustrators wrote and drew when they were children.
Weissman moved away from Baltimore and currently lives in Christchurch, New Zealand with her husband and their two children.
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