Paul Elie
American writer
Paul Elie (born 1965) is an American writer and editor.
Life and works
He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Fordham University and a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University.
His biography on Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2004, and received National Book Critics Circle Award nomination. He became an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1992 and worked there for over two decades. He is currently a fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
He is a long-time contributor to the American Catholic journal Commonweal. Don Brophy, managing editor for the Catholic book publisher Paulist Press, includes The Life You Save May Be Your Own in his 2007 book One Hundred Great Catholic Books from the Early Centuries to the Present.
Reinventing Bach was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in the Criticism category. He wrote the afterword for 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty by Mario Marazziti, published by Seven Stories Press in March 2015.
He has three sons Leo, Pietro and Milo with his wife, Lenora.
“Paul Elie” enters the record as american writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paul, Elie and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Paul Elie” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Paul, Elie and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7150482. VIAF identifies the subject as 12542859. The Library of Congress control number is n94059219. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 2004, 1992 and 2007.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Paul Elie”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Paul Elie primary sources, Paul Elie archive and Paul research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Paul Elie”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Paul Elie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.