Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is a professor of history at Smith College where she teaches courses on race, slavery and her father, comedic legend Richard Pryor. She is the award-winning author of the article “The Etymology of [N-Word]: Resistance, Language, and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North” and a 2016 book Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War. Her viral TED talk on why it's hard to talk about the n-word has been viewed over two million times.

Something We Said, Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me is Professor Pryor’s latest book (37 Ink an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2026). The book is a braided narrative that seamlessly integrates the history of the n-word with her own story of growing up half Black, half Jewish and all Pryor. It peels back the curtain on the life of the iconic comedian and interrogates the most perplexing word in the American lexicon, a word he helped popularize.

Elizabeth lives in Massachusetts with her husband Jerry Stordeur and loves to go hiking and watch movies with their two grown kids, Lilli and Henry.