Ellen Birkett Morris is an award-winning journalist whose interviews and reviews have appeared in Authorlink, Prairie Schooner Online, The Louisville Courier-Journal, and reprinted in the reader’s guides to The Receptionist and Clever Girl. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Antioch Review, South Caroline Review, and Notre Dame Review. Ellen is a regular contributor to Authorlink.
Ellen is an avid reader and channeled her love of writing into a career as a journalist before taking up creative writing herself. She has contributed articles to national publications including Cooking Light, www.DrKoop.com, and www.womensenews.org.
Ellen’s creative writing crosses genres. She is the author of Surrender, a poetry chapbook. Her fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in journals including Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, wigleaf, Inscape, The Butter, and Shenandoah.
Ellen loves literary fiction, poetry, essays and mysteries. She seeks to interview authors who write beautifully and have a style that is both evocative and accessible.
“I love the work of writers who present unique characters revealed through quirky, particular details. If the characters are believable, I will follow them anywhere. I am less interested in celebrity books that are a collection of random anecdotes. I am looking for a narrative that takes me somewhere.”
Ellen enjoys hearing about where writers get their ideas for work and about the challenges each new book represents.
“It is an honor to talk to writers who share their creative process and talk about the challenges they have overcome. These kinds of insights help us become better writers and better readers.”
Lake Life, David James Poissant, Simon and Schuster - Lake Life, David James Poissant’s debut novel, begins with a tragic accident that brings up long buried family secrets and forces members of the Starling family to examine their relationships.
I Have the Answer, Kelly Fordon, Wayne State Univerity Press - Kelly Fordon’s latest collection of short stories deals with the unexpected losses that life hands out;
Writers & Lovers, Lily King, Grove Atlantic - Writer’s and Lovers is set in 1997 and narrated by Casey Peabody, a 31-year-old writer grieving the death of her mother as she struggles to write, make a living and rebound from a bad romance with a poet.
Carnegie Hill Looks at Love and Marriage at a Co-Op - Inspired by a friend’s experiences on the co-op board of building on New York’s Upper East Side, Jonathan Vatner wrote Carnegie Hill, a novel that uses the travails of residents of an exclusive building to look at the institution of marriage.
Montauk, Nicola Harrison, St. Martin's Press - Enchanted with the history of Montauk, Long Island, Nicola Harrison decided to tell the story of a modest woman who finds herself among high society.
The Last Book Party, Karen Dukess, Henry Holt - In The Last Book Party, Karen Dukess takes us to the summer of 1987 as 25-year-old Eve, an assistant at a publishing house, attends a party at the Cape Cod home of literary luminaries New Yorker writer Henry Grey and his poet wife, Tillie.
The Dutch House, Ann Patchett, Deckle House - Ann Patchett’s latest novel The Dutch House reads like a modern fairy tale with a house that seems enchanted or damned, depending on which character’s perspective you are grounded in, an evil stepmother, and two siblings,
Costalegre, Courtney Maum, - In Costalegre, Courtney Maum’s third novel, Lara and Leonora Calaway are taking refuge in a remote mansion in the Mexican wilderness in 1937 with a group of Surrealist artists, who Leonora has helped to escape Hitler’s Europe.
Olive, Again, Elizabeth Strout, - I remember the moment I fell in love with Olive Kitteridge. It was near the end of the book and Olive was lying down looking out a window.
Things You Save In a Fire, Katherine Center, Macmillan - Katherine Center has a knack for creating women characters that are down to earth, yet heroic, inspiring, but real.