Elena Kaufman

Elena Kaufman is a Canadian-born writer, teacher, and actor who lives in Germany with her family. She writes stories, plays, and crime thrillers. Her creative place is at The Writer’s Room and her fuel is red wine and daily walks in nature.

PRAISE for LOVE BITES

“The stories in Love Bites are both delicate and tough. They contain vivid, every-sense descriptions of place, as well as intriguing and affecting characters who tend to be, not quite lost, but searching. Endings are unexpected – decisions get made often enough simply by default, and futures are distinctly inconclusive. There's everything – grief, dependence, dementia, goodness – and smartly, it's goodness of a slightly ambiguous sort.”

--Joan Barfoot, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and award-winning author of 11 novels

"An austere clear-sightedness characterizes these delicate portraits of missed opportunities and disconnections. Kaufman's gracefully accumulated detail creates a world - or worlds - at once disconcertingly off-beat yet wholly believable. An impressive debut."

--Dr Clare Morgan, author of ‘A Book for All and None’, and Director of the MSt in Creative Writing, University of Oxford

"Elena Kaufman's scintillating LOVE BITES takes us on a kaleidoscopic trip into the psyches of her characters. By turns darkly humorous and wrenchingly poignant, Ms. Kaufman encapsulates modern love and modern relationships--be they romantic or seeking a soulmate of a non-amorous kind. Some of these love stories bite, others take the bite out of our loneliness and longing to connect with the other. Elena Kaufman's prose shines bright with her half-Alice Munro, half-Dorothy Parker eye for the details that undo us or render us whole."

--Lizzie Harwood, Amazon bestselling author of ‘Triumph: Collected Stories’, and ‘Xamnesia’.

“The stories in Loves Bites read like confessions overheard in a dark room and are at once bittersweet and delightfully fresh. In them, characters take the unlikeliest of turns to finally embark on journeys that they were always meant to take, and in the course of doing so, explore the different kinds of love life throws in their direction. Kaufman’s prose sparkles with dry wit, bewitching the reader into taking these journeys along with her.”

--Jing-Jing Lee, author of ‘And Other Rivers,’ ‘If I Could Tell You’, and forthcoming novel, ‘How We Disappeared’

“Modern attractions leave their mark in these lyrical, moving and unexpected tales of love, death and everything in between.”

--Erinna Mettler, author of ‘Starlings’, Unbound author of ‘Fifteen Minutes’

"Picking up on the trace of an idea, of a conversation, a fleeting image, she teases out stories that surprise and engage…”

--Amal Chatterjee, writer, Assistant Course Director, MSt, Creative Writing, University of Oxford