Elizabeth Sims, a veteran reporter and bookseller, has written book reviews for the Detroit Free Press. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Moving Out and The Smudge, and she was a winner of the 1986 Writer's Digest short fiction contest. In addition to being a prolific writer, she is a compulsive sketcher. She holds degrees in English and composition from Michigan State University and Wayne State University, where she won the Tompkins Award for Fiction. A long-time resident of the Detroit area, where Holy Hell is set, she now lives in Northern California.