Elaine Lindsay was educated at St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School, Adelaide. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from Flinders University, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Children's Literature from Macquarie University, a Post-Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from Australian Catholic University, and, from Sydney University, a Masters of Public Policy, Master of Arts (with Merit), and a PhD (1997).
Lindsay has worked as a writer, reviewer and editor and has had her poetry, reviews and articles published in Australian literary journals and newspapers. She has also worked in radio as a producer, announcer and interviewer, including work for Radio 5UV and the Department of Adult Education at Adelaide University. She has been chair of the judging panel for the Voss Award since 2016. She retired from teaching in 2021.
LIndsay has also been employed as Senior Project Officer for the Literature Board of the Australia Council (1978-1994) and Program Manager for Literature and History at Arts NSW (1997-2009). She taught English Literature at Australian Catholic University in 1996-97 and returned to that University as Executive Officer for the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) in 2009. In 2011 she took up the position of Research Development Coordinator in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Australian Catholic University, was subsequently appointed Senior Lecturer in Literature in the Faculty of Education and Arts in 2016.
LIndsay was co-editor of Women-Church: an Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion between 1993 and 2007. In 2012, she co-edited Preachers, Prophets and Heretics: Anglican Women’s Ministry with Janet Scarfe (Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2012). She contributed the section 'Fiction: Australian Fiction and Religion' to the Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed., Thomson Gale, 2004). She has also written widely on Australian women writers for various significant reference works, including the biography of Barbara Hanrahan for the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ANU Press, 2021) and the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Gale, 2004); sections on Jean Bedford, Carmel Bird, Marion Halligan, and Amy Witting for the Encyclopedia of Post-colonial Literatures in English (Routledge, 2004); and online entries on Thea Astley, Barbara Hanrahan, and Elizabeth Jolley for The Literary Encyclopedia.
