Grace Period is Elisabeth Nonas’ fourth published novel. She has also written several screenplays, short stories, magazine articles, and essays. She coauthored with Simon LeVay the nonfiction City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America. 

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Her earlier novels focused on how lesbians form community and create family. Given that her first book appeared in 1985 when she was in her mid-30s, she clearly has different concerns as she ages and her life continues to unfold. These were what sparked Grace Period. 

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Born and raised in New York City, and despite believing she’d never leave, she moved to Los Angeles after N.Y.U. graduate film school and stayed for eighteen years—long enough to think that sixty degrees felt cold. In July 1995 she followed her heart and moved back east to Ithaca, New York. 

 

In January 1996, when she wasn’t chipping ice off her car, she taught two introductory screenwriting classes in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. That ultimately led to a full-time position. In her twenty-five years there, she taught all levels of screenwriting, developed courses in adaptation, writing for video games and emerging media, and, her favorite, “Story: From Cave Paintings to Emerging Media.” She felt incredibly lucky to be teaching writing in a time of expanded narrative delivery. 

Elisabeth retired from teaching in December 2019 and continues to live in Ithaca, NY, with her spouse, Nancy K. Bereano, founding publisher and editor of Firebrand Books.