Biography

The Old Jail - Pony, Montana
Diane Elliott was born in San Francisco, grew up in Minnesota, immigrated to Montana in the early 1970s, and plans to die with a smile on her face in her chosen country.

Her historical novel "Strength of Stone" was short-listed for the 2003 Saroyan Prize for Literature and garnered the 2003 Willa Finalists Award in historical fiction. She has published poetry and short stories in literary magazines and received awards from the Montana Institute of the Arts, the National Book Club and the Mary Brennen Clapp Memorial Poetry Contest. Her multimedia script, "Impersonating Bernie" written for the Montana Ballet Company, received NEA funding and was produced in 1993.

For fifteen years Elliott wrote from the old Pony jail nestled in the Tobacco Root Mountains. Now she works from home in Bozeman while sharing an office with her husband. Nights she goes to sleep listening to him playing his melodic claw-hammer banjo. Together they garden, hunt and walk their Standard Poodle, Spud. They have been married for over fifty years.