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Elissa Altman

Biography

Elissa Altman

Elissa Altman is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir POOR MAN'S FEAST and the James Beard Award-winning blog of the same name. She writes the Washington Post column, "Feeding My Mother," and her work has appeared everywhere from O, The Oprah Magazine and Tin House to the New York Times, and has been anthologized for five consecutive years in Best Food Writing. She lives in Connecticut with her family.

Elissa Altman

Books by Elissa Altman

Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing
by Elissa Altman - Memoir, Nonfiction

After surviving a traumatic childhood in 1970s New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly 20 years. After much time, therapy and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place. Then she is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter. Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth.