Elizabeth Scott

About Elizabeth Scott

Elizabeth Scott is an American author of young adult fiction who began publishing novels in the mid-2000s and quickly established herself as a writer willing to take on dark, challenging subject matter for teenage readers. She grew up in a small town in Virginia and has described her childhood love of reading as what led her toward writing. She worked as a legal secretary before her fiction career took hold.

Scott is best known for Living Dead Girl (2008), a short, harrowing novel narrated in the first person by a teenage girl who was abducted at age ten by a man who calls himself Ray. The novel depicts five years of captivity, abuse, and psychological manipulation, told in a deliberately spare prose style that many reviewers found more disturbing for what it implies than what it states explicitly. Scott has spoken about writing the book as a way to give voice to victims of abuse and trafficking who are often rendered invisible.

Living Dead Girl has been challenged and removed from school libraries and curriculum across the United States, with objections centering on its portrayal of sexual abuse, violence, and captivity. Supporters of the book argue that it provides an unflinching look at a real and serious crime while centering the victim's experience, and that removing it from schools denies students access to a work that addresses subjects many young people encounter in the real world.

Beyond Living Dead Girl, Scott has written over a dozen young adult novels across a range of tones, from intense psychological dramas to lighter romantic comedies. Her other titles include Bloom (2007), Perfect You (2008), Something, Maybe (2009), and Grace (2010). She has continued to write steadily through the 2010s and 2020s, maintaining a dedicated readership among fans of emotionally honest YA fiction.