About

Shala Erlich’s first novel Night Float, about a psychiatry resident and her bipolar sister, is forthcoming in May 2027 with Tortoise Books. Her essays and stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, Short Reads, Fourth Genre, The Missouri Review, The Ghost Story, The Florida Review, and others. Her essay, “Lost and Unlost,” published by Southern Humanities Review, is a "Notable" in 2025 Best American Essays edited by Jia Tolentino.

Shala grew up in Berkeley, CA. She is a practicing psychiatrist and lives near the mountains and the ocean in Bellingham, WA, where she and her husband raised two kids. She is currently at work on her second novel which follows three outsider medical students through the pre-Roe, Vietnam era and beyond.