Elan Durham @europabridge1

Writer, Editor, and Traveler in Ipswich, Massachusetts

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
— George Orwell

Adventures in Paradise, a screwball romantic comedy–crime caper, is set against the backdrop of London’s Hackgate Media Scandal. Journalist Aurora Blunton and hospitality mogul Clive Reade meet and find antipathy, common ground, and a May–December romance that flips the seasonal roles. #Hackgate closed a tabloid and caused a stink across London society … Adventures in Paradise turns the scandal on its head with a cracking ensemble cast, cheeky hints of HBO’s Succession, and third-act dinner-party surprises to revive the screwball comedies of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

Borrowed Light spans some 45 years of American life in five acts and twelve linked stories, exploring personal freedom, the meaning of family, the requirements of home, and the cost of enduring love. It follows Jean Turner across the US and the pond to the UK, but first, she meets Morgan Reed, her British university boyfriend, now a Wall Street survivor; Teddy Fortesque, a veteran British actor who preps her for a surprise acting career; and a cast of photographers, producers, hikers, architects, and hoteliers who knit the American South to Los Angeles, New York, London, and the world.

Both works are registered with the US Copyright Office, the WGA Registry, and The Vault.

“Borrowed Light concerns the life of Elan Durham’s smart, fierce, and witty heroine Jean Turner… a full-blown, wonderful… sometimes hilarious, sometimes scathing and gorgeous sail through a life.”
— Rebecca Lee, Professor of Creative Writing at UNC-Wilmington and author of Bobcat and Other Stories and The City Is A Rising Tide.

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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends … Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 1750.

  • Work
    • Writer-Screenwriter-Editor
  • Education
    • MFA
    • University of North Carolina
    • University of Oregon
    • University of Alabama
    • Louisiana State University
Recommendations
Borrowed Light concerns the life of Elan Durham's smart, fierce, and witty heroine Jean Turner, and it is a full-blown, wonderful ... sometimes hilarious, sometimes scathing, and gorgeous sail through a life, which includes a childhood in South, lives in Los Angeles and New York, and then a luminous if ambivalent and hard-earned redemption back in the South and beyond. Elan Durham's stories are some of the most stunning I've read in a fiction of surpassing beauty and humour.
Rebecca Lee, Professor and author of Bobcat, and The City is a Rising Tide.
Elan has taught a variety of writing courses, literature, and Women's Studies courses, and her breadth of knowledge and abilities is impressive. Additionally, she is an innovative teacher; she works hard, loves to conference with students, and creates imaginative assignments and classroom activities that speak to her abilities as an innovative, caring instructor of writing.
Don Bushman, Professor, English UNCW
Elan Durham's guidance and example have been noted by students as inspirational and significant in their lives. I consider this tribute to be very important, as it underscores the teaching mission of the university and the value of her work with students.
P Nelson Reid, Ph.D. UNCW Dean of Students