Jean Alicia Elster

Jean Alicia Elster is a 2017 Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts and a former attorney. Her most recent book, How It Happens (Wayne State University Press, 2021), won multiple accolades, including the 2021 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner for Young Adult Fiction and the 2022 Bronze Medal in Young Adult Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was also selected as the 2023 Black History Month Community Read by the Sterling Heights (MI) Public Library.

Elster is also the author of The Colored Car, a Michigan Notable Book and Midwest Book Award Gold Winner, and Who’s Jim Hines?, named one of the Library of Michigan’s Notable Books. Her children’s series Joe Joe in the City (2001-2003) earned her the 2002 Governor’s Emerging Artist Award.

She is a sought-after speaker, presenting at events like the 2023 How It Happens Black History Month celebration at the Sterling Heights Public Library, the AWP conference panel on Black trauma and joy, and the Michigan Reading Association Conference. In 2022, Elster spoke at the Detroit Historical Museum and keynoted the Warren Consolidated Schools Writing Celebration.

As a former attorney, Elster has edited books and written for national publications, including Ms., World Vision, and Christian Science Sentinel. She also contributed to the award-winning Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialog with Today’s Youth (1996). Elster founded Write Word LLC in 1994 and resides in Detroit with her husband and two adult children.