Lolis Eric Elie is an award-winning metro columnist and accomplished author. Since 1995, he has chronicled the heartbeat of New Orleans's neighborhoods thrice weekly for the city's major daily newspaper, the Times-Picayune. Elie is currently writing Of Bondage & Memory, a book on the enduring legacy of the slave trade on two continents.

A recognized expert on New Orleans food and culture, Elie is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country, a book about the culture of barbecue. He produced a television documentary based on that book and has several other culinary documentaries in development. Elie is editor of Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing for University of North Carolina Press.

As a producer for the Smithsonian Institute's Jazz Oral History Project, Elie conducted interviews with many of New Orleans's elder jazz musicians. He holds master's degrees from the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York and the University of Virginia.