Elisa Lorello was born in Queens, NY. The youngest of seven, she grew up on the North Shore of Long Island in a musical family, surrounded by cars, guitars, cats, and a dead hamster every now and then.

Growing up during the 80s, Elisa covered her walls with Duran Duran posters and used lots of hairspray. She explored many passions, including drawing, tennis, and music (but there were no violin solos in any Duran Duran or Howard Jones songs), but even though her interests changed over the years, writing was her constant companion.

In her early 20s, Elisa went to work as a manicurist. When not catching up on the latest in the Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuocco or OJ sagas with her clients, she was always spotted either with a book or a writing pad.

In 1995, Elisa left Long Island for southeastern Massachusetts, where she attended UMass-Dartmouth for both her bachelor and master's degrees, respectively. In 2000, as part of her graduate education in Professional Writing, she became a teaching associate, and met two professors of rhetoric and composition who took her under their wings. She also published several personal essays and creative nonfiction pieces. This union of teaching, rhetoric, and writing ultimately became Elisa's calling, and remains so to this day.

In 2004, Elisa began her first novel, Faking It. "I never saw myself as a fiction writer," she said, "but I had this idea that wouldn't go away, so I decided to write it just for me. Everything snowballed from there." Since then, Elisa has written a sequel, Ordinary World, and is currently co-writing a third novel with friend and former student, S. R. Paquette.

Faking It is now available at Lulu.com.

Currently, Elisa lives in North Carolina, where she teaches academic writing at NC State. She is a Facebook addict, an Aaron Sorkin fan, enjoys baking, and plays Duran Duran songs on a lefty acoustic guitar. Life is good.