Read her blog On the Whole | Plus Model Magazine interview | Leading Questions interview  |  Nashville, TN One Paper article on Dr. Elam, Pearlsong Press, & author Pat Ballard | 12 Ways to Love Your Body

PDF of references for Dr. Elam's chapter in the book Fat Kids: Truth and Consequences (2014, Beaufort Books): "Collateral Damage: Fat Kids, Dieting & Eating Disorders."

Peggy Elam is a licensed psychologist, healer, journalist, poet, artist, and founder of Pearlsong Press. She lives in and works out of Nashville, TN.

Before earning an M.S. and Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, she graduated from Mississippi University for Women with a bachelor's degree in journalism and English (double major) and worked for the Jackson, MS Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi's largest daily newspaper, for several years.

Several years after her career change to clinical psychology, Dr. Elam (who usually prefers to be called Peggy) became interested in combining her journalism and psychology/ psychotherapy training and experience through writing for the public, which she found a refreshing change after many years of academic writing. That led to her gig writing for iVillage.com, which ended in December 2000, although iVillage owns the rights to and still posts many of her articles.

In addition to her iVillage.com and other mass media articles, she has had several poems published in magazines. A limited edition lettertype broadsheet of her poem "Sacred Space" was published in winter 2004 by Tulip Polar Press of Middle Tennessee State University. She has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Tennessean, Mademoiselle, Teen, the BBC, and local television and radio shows in Tennessee and around the country. She has also been a featured guest expert in chat sessions on WebMD, America Online, and Something Fishy (eating disorders website), and facilitated a weekly chat session on emotional health topics for AllHealth.com from 1998 through late 2000.

Peggy spent much of 2001 and the years immediately following it deepening her holistic focus by going through a formal training program in massage and bodywork at the Natural Health Institute in Nashville, TN, which allowed her to obtain an additional license as a massage therapist in Tennessee. (When her mother asked her when she was going to stop taking classes, her answer was "probably never.") She retired the massage license in 2012.

Before, during, and after the massage therapy training she has studied various spiritual and "alternative" healing practices, from ancient and modern mystery schools to Native American medicine wheels to psychological acupressure techniques such as Thought Field Therapy and Emotional Freedom Techniques to Reiki, Healing Touch, and craniosacral therapy.