Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts to a Jewish family. She is the second daughter of Julia M. and Louis S. Lipman. She attended public schools and graduated from Simmons College (now Simmons University) in 1972 with a BA in journalism. While still in college, Lipman worked as an intern for the Lowell Sun.

During the 1970s she was a staff writer and editorial assistant for the Massachusetts Teachers Association monthly newsletter, Massachusetts Teacher. Lipman also worked for a time for Boston's public television station, WGBH, writing press releases. She credits the adult education creative writing class she took at Brandeis University in 1978 for propelling her into writing fiction.

​

She began writing fiction in 1979, and her first short story, “Catering,” was published in Yankee Magazine. Lipman’s first book, Into Love and Out Again, a collection of short stories, was published by Viking in 1987. She published her first novel, Then She Found Me, in 1990. Her 1998 novel The Inn at Lake Devine, explores Antisemitism and Jewish intermarriage.  

​

Lipman received the New England Book award for fiction in 2001. Her novel Then She Found Me was adapted into a 2008 feature film, directed by and starring Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick, a process that took 19 years. Two of her other novels have also been optioned for movies.

​

Her 13th novel Rachel to the Rescue, featuring a character recently sacked from the Trump White House, was published by the UK publisher Lightning Books in November 2020 after Lipman's US publisher initially declined to take it on. Stacy Schiff has called it ‘The Trump book that could only be published abroad’.

​

In 2022, the Pollard Memorial Library Foundation in Lowell, Massachusetts established an Elinor Lipman award for writing, to honor a book by a Lowell-based writer.