*Video Interview | Texas Monthly Talks, KLRU, Austin PBS Texas Monthly Talks is a production of Texas Monthly magazine and KLRU-TV. All rights reserved.
Elizabeth Crook was born in
Houston in 1959. She lived in Nacogdoches and then San Marcos, Texas
with her parents and brother and sister until 1966 when the family
moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of VISTA for
Lyndon Johnson. Two years later her father was appointed Ambassador
to Australia and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to
Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating
from San Marcos High School in 1977. She attended Baylor University
for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982. She has
written three novels: The Raven's
Bride and Promised Lands
were published by Doubleday and then reissued by SMU Press as part
of the Southwest Life and Letters series. The Night Journal was published
by Viking/Penguin in 2006 and reissued in paperback by Penguin.
Elizabeth has written for periodicals such as Texas Monthly
and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and has served on
the council of the Texas Institute of Letters. She is a member of
Western Writers of America and The Texas Philosophical Society, and
was selected the honored writer for 2006 Texas Writers' Month,
joining previous honorees O. Henry, J. Frank Dobie, John Graves,
Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Katherine Anne Porter, Elmer Kelton,
Liz Carpenter, Sarah Bird, James Michener, and Horton Foote. Her
first novel, The Raven's Bride, was the 2006 Texas Reads:
One Book One Texas selection. The Night Journal was awarded
the 2007 Spur award for Best Long Novel of the West and the 2007
Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction.
Elizabeth currently lives in Austin
with her husband and two children.
