About Elizabeth Rusch

ELIZABETH RUSCH is an award-winning magazine writer and children's book author. She writes both fiction and nonfiction in the areas of science, art, sports, waves, jokes, crayons, and mud — anything that catches her fancy.

Liz began her professional writing career as an editor and writer for Teacher Magazine, a national award-winning magazine for elementary and secondary school teachers. That inside view of how magazine publishing worked gave Liz what she needed to know to become a successful full-time freelance writer. She has published more than 100 articles in numerous national magazines for children and adults. Her publishing credits include Muse, Read, American Girl, Harper's, Smithsonian, Mother Jones, Parenting, and Backpacker, among many others.

After spending nearly a decade writing about children, Liz was itching to write for children. Her first children's book, Generation Fix, was a Smithsonian magazine Notable Children's Book and a finalist for the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award and the Oregon Book Award. It is in its second printing and has been published in Korean.

The nonfiction chapter book Will It Blow?: Become a Volcano Detective at Mount St. Helens was a Natural History magazine Best Book for Young Readers, a Washington Reads pick, and a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. The hardcover edition is in its second printing. Liz's nonfiction picture book The Planet Hunter: The Story Behind What Happened to Pluto which the L.A. Times called "a fascinating tale, charmingly told" was also an Oregon Book Award finalist. Her picture book, A Day With No Crayons, won the Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children's Literature and is a finalist for the Illinois Children's Choice award. It has been translated into Korean and is in its second printing. Liz is also the author of the nonfiction library title Conquering The Court, a Girls Got Game title on tennis.

Her newest title For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart was published in 2011 by Tricycle/Random House to great reviews. Publishers Weekly's starred review describes it as "a moving portrait of an unsung musician." In its starred review, Kirkus calls the book "an elegantly constructed work."

She has two books forthcoming in Houghton Mifflin's award-winning Scientists in the Field series including Mission More Than Accomplished: The incredible story of the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity – and the scientist who created them. She also has a picturebook called Volcano Rising forthcoming from Charlesbridge. Liz is at work on books on electrical wizard Nikola Tesla, glass artist Dale Chihuly, and planet-saving chemist Mario Molina as well as a middle grade novel called April Fool and a graphic novel called Muddy Boy.

 

Liz loves the Carl Sagan quote: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Many of her books and articles are about discovery: a girl's discovery of color in the world all around her, an astronomer's revolutionary discoveries about our solar system, a young boy's discoveries about himself when he gains superpowers by plastering himself with mud.

To Liz, researching, writing, revising and even selling writing is a process of discovery that she loves to share with other budding writers. Liz has led workshops and given lectures and presentations for children and adults at schools such as Childpeace Montessori, the Merlo School, and Maimonides in Portland; colleges such as Portland State University, Duke University, and University of California at Berkeley; and conferences such as the Willamette Writers Conference, Wordstock, Chalk It Up for Literacy, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in Portland, Seattle and Denver, and the National Service Learning Conference in Minneapolis. She is an instructor in children's literature and magazine writing at The Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon.
 

 

Funny But True 

Elizabeth Rusch was almost born in a taxicab in the Queens-Midtown tunnel in New York City. Her mother made it to the delivery room of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the nick of time on October 14, 1966.

She is the third child of six, three boys and three girls, just like the Brady Bunch. Her brother Mike, older by one year, had a hard time pronouncing Elizabeth and could only sputter out Li-li, so her nickname became Lili.

(She was Lili until she bloomed into an ornery middle school student and insisted that everyone call her Liz. She sticks to her guns on this one, though her husband got away with calling her Liver once.)

Lili went to a small Catholic elementary school called St. Mary’s in Greenville, South Carolina, complete with knuckle-wrapping nuns in black habits. Little Lili loved staring out the window, chasing boys all over the concrete playground, and sitting under the shade of the pecan tree, nibbling on the nuts. She was an avid reader, but not a great student at first. (A-F grades were not-too-sneakily disguised as E for Excellent, V for Very Good, G for Good, S for Satisfactory, and U for Unsatisfactory. Little Lili got a few too many Ss and Us.)

One of her earliest attempts at writing was a gripping story of two girls racing horses, suspiciously named Lili (her own name) and Sharon (her little sister’s name). To this day, Lili does not know why she let Sharon win. Maybe she knew even then that in any good story the underdog must prevail.

Before becoming a writer, Lili was a playwright. Though she didn’t actually “wright.” She and her best friend Karen Anderson made up and performed plays. Their longest running series was the Carter Girls, about two clever girl detectives. (She also performed in local productions of Tom Sawyer, Oliver and Oedipus Rex.)

When her family moved to Guilford, Connecticut in the sixth grade, Lili, now Liz, started to pay attention and actually like school. She distinctly remembers thinking how interesting her classes were. She read legal cases and built a model city in Social Studies, peered into a telescope in Science, and wrote poetry in English class. Her favorite subjects went from recess to English, Social Studies, and Science. Once she got past adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, she liked Math, too. (She still finds that almost everything in this wide world interests her.)

Liz went to high school, blah, blah, blah, college at Duke, party, study, party, then landed this amazing job as part of the start-up staff for a new national magazine for teachers. She was part of creating the magazine: the look-and-feel, the content, the marketing plan, even the budget. The magazine got the greenlight, and the editor hired editors and writers from top magazines across the country. When Teacher Magazine began publication in 1989, the big question was: What are we going to do with Liz?

Since Liz did not have a writing degree (she majored in Economics in college) or any real experience writing, she was made the Copy Editor. When offered the position, she told her boss that she was terrible at spelling and grammar. His jaw dropped.  But she promised to look everything up, and managed not to get fired. And that’s how her writing career really began.