Deliver Me
by Elle Nash

Longlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2024. A bleak exploration of one woman's twisted desperation for love, motherhood, and vindication.

At a meatpacking facility in Missouri, Dee-Dee and her coworkers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift.

The work is repetitive and brutal, but Dee-Dee's more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term.

Dee-Dee fled the Pentecostal church years ago, but judgment follows her in the form of regular calls from her mother, whose raspy voice urges her to quit living in sin and marry her boyfriend, Daddy, an underemployed ex-con with an insect fetish. When her charismatic first crush Sloane reappears after a twenty-year absence, feeding her insecurities and awakening suppressed desires, Dee-Dee fears she will go back to living in the shadows. She will matter. She will be loved. She will be complete. Neither another miscarriage nor Sloane's own pregnancy deters her: she must prepare for the baby's arrival.

ABOUT ELLE

“Elle Nash writes like she climbed out of a black hole simply to invent the knife.”

—The Observer

Elle Nash is the author of the novels Deliver Me (Unnamed Press, 2023 and Verve Books, 2024), Gag Reflex (Clash Books, 2022), and Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books, 2018 and 404 Ink, 2019), which was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O - The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire’ and the short story collection Nudes (404 Ink, 2022).

Her work appears in Guernica, BOMB, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and runs Goth Book Club.

Elle is available for one-on-one instruction and runs various workshops throughout the year.

CLASSES
& EDITING

From the core of Dangerous Writing, Elle assesses the work to meet the writer where they are at, exploding explanations of common writing “rules” while deconstructing the rationale behind them so that syntax can be subverted into a writer’s unique, burnt voice through rigorous excision at the sentence level and in terms of how each element of the writing balances the whole of the work.

Her students and clients have been published in Best British Short Stories, 3AM Magazine, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Hippocampus Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown and others. Manuscript clients have had their full-length works published by various independent presses in the US and UK. Elle’s philosophy is that there is no singular path toward literary success. She will work with you to define your goals and set deadlines to reach them.

Current classes are available below.

knife party 

Self-editing

Named after the infamous Deftones song, this self-guided class will arm you with a set of tools that will allow you to EXCISE the waste out of your work with a surgeon’s finesse.

This self-guided class includes:

  • 4 video lessons on finding your blind spots and foolproof self-editing tools

  • Journaling prompts to help you develop your own set of knives

  • Relevant reading assignments to support you in your editing journey

  • Lifetime access to Elle’s writing workshop Discord server, Knife Party: find a writing community, resources, calls for submission, and more

KNIFE PARTY

£29

Self-guided
Online Course

TESTIMONIALS

TESTIMONIALS 

"Elle brought an incredibly sharp eye to my work and in editing one story was able to impart lessons, strategies, and editorial techniques that I will be using for the rest of my writing life. She has an ability to assess the work from multiple vantage points simultaneously (as a reader, as an editor, as a writer) that is invaluable. She took her time walking me through her edits, and the story itself, so that the process was truly a collaborative, artistic conversation and not just a mark-up. I don't know how she does this. But I can't wait to work with her again. She cares deeply about the work and the community and I'm fortunate to know her."

—Derek Maine, author of
CHA RAC TERS

Elle is a terrific editor. Her advice ranges from line-by-line suggestions regarding word choice and sequencing, to big picture issues such as overall emotional resonance and narrative arcs. Highly recommended.

—B. R. Yeager, author of

NEGATIVE SPACE

Elle Nash is the best editor I've ever had the fortune to work with. She found many ingenious ways to make my manuscript become more compelling in a smaller footprint. Elle Nash has incredible taste. That's the thing, anybody can try and edit your work and they might do an okay job, but Elle has exceptional taste and will be able to help you in ways that most content editors wouldn't be able to grasp. She has a preternatural understanding of characterization, plot, pacing, conflict, and resolution. She is able to see beyond the ordinary and find a way to guide towards the transcendent. Elle is cool. Her stellar eye for line edits, coupled with her remarkable taste, make her an incredible asset to any writer who has found themselves painted into a corner.

—Bud Smith, author of

TEENAGERS

“Dangerous writing is writing and lying.”

—Tom Spanbauer

Elle studied with Tom Spanbauer, the founder of Dangerous Writing, for two years as she completed her first novel, Animals Eat Each Other. He believes it’s imperative to bring the reader to their knees. Some of these various writing traditions harken back to the infamous editor Gordon Lish. For Tom, writing’s heart is like “wrestling with the angel”—bringing that great battle within us into the world and onto our pages. Elle’s teaching philosophy encompasses this value.

Sign up below for updates on upcoming classes or workshops with Elle. 🧿🦷🫶