Magazine and Newspaper Writing

I got my start at Leiden University, where I had a column in the student newspaper, Mare, about my life as an American student in the Netherlands. When I moved to New Hampshire’s Upper Valley five years ago, I began writing for regional magazines Image and Here in Hanover. My work has since appeared in The Valley News, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Edible Green Mountains, Leite’s Culinaria, The Miami Herald, New Hampshire Magazine, Ode, Women’s Running, Relish, and other publications. My favorite topics include New Englanders, fitness, food, and…a tale of two Lebanons:

Essays and Memoir

Coming from different cultures, my husband Maroun, from a village just north of Beirut, and I, a military brat who grew up on American bases from Maine to Hawaii—are accustomed to differing perspectives. Much to the confusion of my family, immigration officers, and ticketing agents, when we got engaged in 2008 and moved to New Hampshire, we settled in the town of Lebanon. I’m currently writing a series of essays about my experiences “between the two Lebanons.” I’m also working on a memoir, From Lebanon to Lebanon (New Hampshire), about the first four years of our intercultural marriage, and will be looking for an agent.

Blog: From Lebanon to Lebanon (New Hampshire)

As I settled into my new life in New Hampshire and considered what marriage meant to me, I looked at other couples in the Upper Connecticut River Valley—they seemed to have so much in common: some went to church together, for example, and didn’t disobey U.S. State Department guidelines to visit in-laws. Gradually, as New Hampshire began to thaw, I realized I wasn’t as alone as I had thought. Our state is statistically one of the least diverse in the nation, so finding fellowship was a challenge, at first. But I discovered others who were in bi-cultural relationships. As I listened to their adventures; I found their tales so different, and yet so similar, to my own. I began to collect stories from couples near and far, and will post them on my blog.

Elizabeth Kelsey’s work is made possible in part by a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.