​Erica Verrillo was raised in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of classical pianist, Violet Silverstein, and noted psychophysicist, Ronald T. Verrillo. At age seventeen, Ms. Verrillo moved to England, where she performed in the Oxford Symphony Orchestra. On her return to the U.S. she attended New England Conservatory. She finished her undergraduate education at Tufts, where she majored in Latin American History. After completing her degree, Ms. Verrillo spent two years traveling throughout Central and South America, where she gained first-hand knowledge of the culture and politics of Latin America. Verrillo returned to complete her M.A. in Linguistics at Syracuse University. Soon afterward she joined SUNY Albany's Chiapas Project as a Mayan linguist. While in Mexico, Verrillo founded an aid organization for Guatemalan refugees, which she directed for ten years. Ms. Verrillo has authored three middle reader fantasies, Elissa’s Quest, Elissa’s Odyssey and World’s End (Random House). Her short stories have appeared in over a dozen journals. Ms. Verrillo's first screenplay, The Treehouse, was completed in 2011. In 1995, she teamed up with Lauren Gellman, former vice-president of a Fortune 500 company, to write Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide (published by St. Martin's Press in 1998). It was the first comprehensive book on treating ME/CFS, and remains so to this day. She is currently completing a memoir, Lunfardo, about her travels through South America and her experience living in Argentina during the Dirty War.