About Me

Elise Burke Brown comes from a family of detectives, including a grandfather who filled her childhood with true crime stories she learned not to repeat at daycare. Her novel, Chase Harlem, won the grand prize for the Monroe-Walton Center for the Arts New Writers Contest 2021 as well as the 2023 Killer Nashville Claymore Award for Best Unpublished Investigator Novel. After winning, Rising Action Publishing acquired the novel and its sequel, which was a Top Pick for the 2024 Claymore Award.  Elise has had stories and poetry published in Sojourn Literary Magazine, Dewpoint Literary Magazine, The Moonlit Road, and Southern Quill. She's also sold stories to the podcast, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. She teaches composition at the University of Alabama and runs  the book blog, https://coupleofbeesread.com/. She is represented by Rachel Beck of Liza Dawson Associates, and her thriller, High Tides and Homicides, is currently on submission.