Elizabeth Scarboro was born on September 11, before it was September 11, in a hospital in Denver, on the night of an eclipse, which her father remembers well, and her mother, shakily. She spent the first part of her childhood running around the Rocky Mountains and the next exploring the canals and bus systems of Phoenix, Arizona. She now lives in Berkeley, California, with her family, and finds herself nostalgic for snow and for summer days so hot you can’t go barefoot.
Scarboro is the author of My Foreign Cities, A Memoir, an unlikely love story set on the frontiers of modern medicine, which chronicles Scarboro’s marriage to her first husband who had cystic fibrosis and died at 30. My Foreign Cities was an Oprah Book of the Week, one of Library Journal’s Best Memoirs of 2013, and the winner of the 2014 Chautauqua Prize. She is also the author of two novels for children: Phoenix, Upside Down and The Secret Language of the S.B. She received the Olga and Paul Menn Award for Fiction, and her essays on health care have appeared in many places, including The New York Times, The Telegraph, and the Bellevue Literary Review.
Scarboro speaks at hospitals and nonprofits about topics including medical ethics, the doctor-patient relationship, facing life-threatening illness, and end-of-life care.
