New York City native Elise Shin grew up a grocer’s kid on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She helped her parents bag fruits and veggies, noshed on buttered matzah, and chatted with countless customers. On weeknights, she visited her grandmother on the outskirts of Queens, where she listened to lurid Korean folktales. The diverse, interactive theater that was her childhood sparked a curiosity and love of story that would take her across the globe and into the imagined worlds of books.

Her interest in storytelling solidified at Cornell University, where she studied allegory and mythology. She went on to study fiction writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and creative producing at The Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. Elise later taught at Seoul National University before returning to New York, where she served as Director of Digital Communications for NYC Health and Housing.

She transitioned to film and television through development and production, working for Quinn’s House, RadicalMedia, and FX Networks, and contributing to Pachinko and Quantum Leap. As a producer, her short films screened internationally at film festivals including the Berlin International Film Festival, and MoMA New Directors | New Films.

Now in Venice, California, Elise writes grounded speculative dramas. She is a participant in the inaugural Los Angeles cohort of The Writers Lab, a 2026 Disruptors Fellow, and a Finalist and First Alternate for the 2026 Disney TV Writing Program.

She is currently developing stories that blend mystery, horror, and science fiction to explore questions of identity, memory, and what it means to be human.

When she’s not writing, Elise can be found surfing her local break.