Elena Sheppard is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, The New Yorker, Vogue, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and W, as well as on NBC and MSNBC. She has been a writer-in residence at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and taught creative nonfiction and journalism in Columbia's High School Summer Program. She lives in New York with her husband and children.