Elisa Gabbert writes the On Poetry column for The New York Times. Born in El Paso, Texas, she earned a BA in linguistics from Rice University and an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of seven books, including The Self Unstable (Black Ocean, 2013), named one of The New Yorker's best books of 2013; The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020); Normal Distance (Soft Skull, 2022); and Any Person Is the Only Self (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). Her work has also appeared in poetry and essay forms across multiple genres.
