Professional Bio.

Over the past 20 years, writing about everything from high fashion to cannabis science to The Stone Masters, Courtney Eldridge has published two novels, The Generosity of Women and GhostSigns, and Unkempt, a short story collection. Recordàbattre, the translation of her novella, “The Former World Record Holder Settles Down,” received France’s Prix du Marais in 2006 and was profiled in VogueParis. Eldridge’s work also appears in BOMB: The Author Interviews and The Better of McSweeney’s, Volume 1.

Courtney has served as a juror for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, as well as receiving residencies from the Ucross Foundation and Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, New York.

Launched as Saccades Project in 2009, Courtney’s 3-year collaboration with hundreds of teenage artists from around the world resulted in her first YA (Young Adult) novel, Ghost Signs, published in 2013. From 2010-2014, she judged for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, reading the next generation of great American authors. Equally humbling, Eldridge’s experiences as Guest Writer/Visiting Instructor at college programs throughout the U.S., in addition to teaching adult workshops through The Writer’s Center, one of the oldest and richest creative communities in the country.

In 2015, Courtney curated her first group show for renowned Bay Area gallery, NIAD, called “Telling It Slant” which exhibited at the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, California. And in 2019, thanks to a Steamboat Creates re-grant, she produced her second show, “Redefining Contemporary Art: Select Works from NIAD,” displaying 20 up-and-coming artists in a 100-year-old train station located in her hometown of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Having lived, worked and hustled as a starving artist in 10 U.S. cities and 4 continents, Courtney moved to Appalachia in March 2022, with big dreams of purchasing land and renovating her first house. Which she did—and has all the Before and After pictures to prove it. She also started working as the Creative Director of Cound Group Global (CGG) in 2023, championing the best female basketball players in the world at a truly historic moment in the sport’s growth. Now, 3 years later, she’s coming full circle, returning to her roots in creative writing and independent filmmaking. 

Looking to 2027, current projects include: co-producing Through Broken Doors, a short film about Tehran’s first responders; serving as Creative Advisor for RCA (Ramin Cultural Alliance); and working on her fourth book. She also enjoys herding rescue animals while dividing their time between Charleston, West Virginia and Savannah, Georgia, where she hopes to finally learn to surf in the year ahead.