Elizabeth Shown Mills

Elizabeth Shown Mills is an internationally acclaimed historical researcher and writer who has spent her life studying American culture and the relationships between people—emotional as well as genetic. Featured on BBC, CNN, PBS, and other networks in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, she has guest-blogged for the New York Times and has been widely cited as "the genealogist who has had the most influence in the post-Roots era."

Her 20 books (some of them prize-winning) range from reference works such as "Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace" (Library Journal 2007 Best Reference, now in its 4th edition) to the historical novel, "Isle of Canes," which chronicles a once-enslaved family across four generations, and is drawn from Mills's own research in the archives of six nations.

Her latest works include the greatly enlarged, revised edition of the Louisiana State University Press classic, "Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color," and the 2025 guide for those intimidated by the thought of citations, "Your Stripped Bare Guide to Citing & Using History Sources."