Elizabeth Gallagher grew up in Ventura, California, and studied journalism at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She spent a decade on the crime and courts beat for the Long Beach Press-Telegram before researching for a public radio program in Los Angeles, work that sharpened her ear for the way a neighborhood talks when it thinks no one is listening. Her short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Santa Monica Review, and her reporting has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association.
Now based in Long Beach, Gallagher writes coastal noir and community-centered mysteries that braid newsroom rigor with salt-air atmosphere. Her debut novel, The Enigma of Leviathan Street, established her fascination with maritime labor, immigrant corridors, and the fragile bargains that hold a city together. She teaches community workshops on narrative nonfiction and crime writing, and lives with a rescue mutt named Pinto and a wobbly shelf of beach glass collected from the breakwater after winter storms.
