Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is an American journalist and author best known for her writing on subjects related to architecture, design, culture, and the built environment.
Born Elizabeth A. Evitts in Roanoke, Virginia, and grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.[1] Her father, William Joseph Evitts, was an American historian and author who taught at Hollins College, SUNY Buffalo, and other colleges. Her mother, Carole Allen Evitts, was an arts administrator. Dickinson has an older brother, Michael Evitts.
Dickinson attended Towson High School in Baltimore and then spent two years at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia followed by a year studying in Paris through a program at the Sorbonne. She transferred to SUNY Buffalo, where she graduated with a B.A. in French literature, magna cum laude, in 1995.
She began her career writing for magazines under the name Elizabeth A. Evitts, shifting to Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson following her marriage in 2007. She is known for her work focusing on architecture, design, culture, and the built environment, and she has published on these and other subjects in The Washington Post Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Harper’s Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Print, Design Observer, and The Atlantic, among others. She has also served as an editor at Metropolis magazine and a contributing editor to Architect and Architectural Lighting magazines.[1]
Her 2018 article on the fashion designer Claire McCardell, "A Dress for Everyone," led Dickinson to propose a book on McCardell, titled Unhemmed, contracted to Simon & Schuster in March 2023.[2]
Dickinson also writes short fiction, creative non-fiction, and personal essays and her writing has appeared in these publications: McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly Review, and The Little Patuxent Review.[1]
Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 3 times (2013, 2016, 2017) and has won multiple awards, grants, and fellowships including the following:
Gene S. Stuart Award, Society for American Archeology, 2022[3]
Architectural Journalism Award, American Institute of Architects, Baltimore Chapter, 2022
Roger D. Redden Award, Baltimore Architecture Foundation, 2011
Author Roxane Gay selected Dickinson's short story “A Modern Girl’s Guide to Childbirth” as a 2015 Wigleaf Top 50 (very) Short Fiction winner because she was “willing to take chances and cut through flesh to show us the gleaming white of bone."[7]
