What is Back Booth?

Backbooth is the online home of Minneapolitan* writer and performer Eli Effinger-Weintraub.

I’ve been a writer since before I knew how to form letters (or so they tell me). I spent a remarkably unremarkable childhood in southwestern Michigan before moving to Minnesota to attend Macalester College and liking the area so much that authorities can’t get me to leave.

I am a practitioner of prose fiction, playwriting, creative nonfiction, and spoken-word memoir. I’ve written for the Minnesota Fringe Festival, Theatre Unbound, Patrick’s Cabaret, Seal Press, and Alyson Books. I’m a green writer with a special interest in urban cycling and sustainable living. I love steampunk.

I live in Minneapolis with my wonderful wife, visual artist Leora Effinger-Weintraub, and two buffalo disguised as cats.

Why Back Booth?

There’s a place writers go to when we really believe in writing. Maybe the rest of the time we despair of ever writing a word that’ll matter a damn to anyone, but sometimes we believe our scribbling can change the whole freakin’ world, if we can find enough time, enough caffeine, enough solitude, enough booze, enough words. Some places are real; some are only in our heads; but we all have one. The Back Booth is mine.

*strawberry, chocolate, & lefse