Elizabeth Peavey has been a humor columnist since 1995. Her first regular column, “Outta My Way,” ran in the Portland alternative weekly, Casco Bay Weekly until the paper’s demise in 2001. After a two-year hiatus, she took up again with another column, “Outta My Yard” (same carping, but from a suburban setting), for The Bollard, another Portland-based periodical. Her writing is frequently featured in Down East magazine (among other publications), where she has been a contributing editor since 1997. She authored the Maine chapter of “Fodor’s Road Guide U.S.A.” (Random House) and appears in the anthology “Forty Things To Do When You Turn Forty” (Sellers Publishing).

She has taught public speaking at the University of Southern Maine since 1993, which puts her at something like her 38th semester. She also taught, by invitation of current Maine Poet Laureate Wes McNair, creative nonfiction at the University of Maine at Farmington. She conducts writing workshops, readings and performances all across the state, with audiences ranging from library groups to young writers to prison inmates. She is also a longtime instructor for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, which selected her to serve as Writer in Residence at their 2009 spring writing retreat. All of which is to say – she’s never been able to hold down a real job.

Peavey lives in Portland with her indefatigably patient and understanding husband and their bossy cat – who, by the way, needs to get on this computer and update her Facebook page, so we have to go.