Elise Valmorbida

Elise Valmorbida (born 1971) is an Italian Australian writer and creative writing tutor who currently lives in London.
Having graduated with First Class Honours in English from the University of Melbourne, and later in Graphic Design from Central St. Martin's, Elise was Creative Director at The Body Shop, then at Anglo-American brand agency Fitch. She is now the Creative Director of Word-Design.
Her debut novel Matilde Waltzing was published in 1997 and nominated for two national literary awards. Her second book, a collection of true love stories, The Book Of Happy Endings was published in the UK, Australasia and America in 2007. In the following year, it was published in new translated editions in Korea (publ. Woongjing) and Germany (publ. Droemer). Her short stories have been published internationally via The Ian St James Award, Carve Magazine and anthologies such as From Here to Here, Common Ground, The Bard & Co. Her satirical novel The TV President was published by CB Editions in October 2008. It was described in the Times Literary Supplement as "luridly entertaining fiction". Her most recent novel The Winding Stick was published by Two Ravens Press in May 2009. It was hailed as "a literary classic in the making" and voted book of the year by reviewer A. Brooke on literary website Vulpes Libris. In 2013, the Serbian edition of The Book of Happy Endingswas launched by publishers Vulkan.
Elise Valmorbida is a longstanding creative writing tutor at Central Saint Martin's, University of the Arts, London.
In 2007, she produced Saxon, a micro-budget independent Britfilm released in 2009. SAXON toured international film festivals in Edinburgh, Israel, Europe and London's East End. The film was nominated for the Michael Powell Award (Best New British Feature) at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and won the European Independent Film Festival's Best European Dramatic Feature award.
Elise Valmorbida was personally honoured as a Trailblazer by the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007.