Elizabeth Winder (born September 1980) is an American author and poet.
Winder grew up in the Queens Lake neighborhood of York County, Virginia.[1] She graduated from Bruton High School and the College of William and Mary and earned an MFA from George Mason University.[1] [2]
Winder has published a collection of poetry.[2] Her first novel, Pain, Parties and Work (2013) is a biography of Sylvia Plath. She relies on interviews with Plath's Mademoiselle colleagues to "paint a rather different image of Plath from the one most readers are familiar with".[3] The book is structured more like a magazine, with sidebars describing products and fashion from the time period, as well as excerpts from Plath's journals.[4]
Winder's 2017 book Marilyn in Manhattan[5] focused on 1955, with Newsday calling it "an approach that falls squarely within the popular subgenre of micro-biography".[6] The New York Times review said "rarely has a book about Marilyn Monroe been more maddening"[7] and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch review said the book's market might be "slender" and critiqued Winder's confusing use of first names only,[8] while Publishers Weekly called it a "captivating look" at Monroe's escape from Los Angeles.[9]