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.”
We Love Anderson Cooper, R. L. Maizes, Macmillian - In her debut short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper, R.L. Maizes takes readers into some intriguing scenarios: a young man who decides to come out during his bar mitzvah, a disfigured tattoo artist who discovers healing powers, a therapist, whose new couch has the power to take away sadness, a woman haunted by the spirit of her dead dogs.
The Editor, Steven Rowley, Peguin Random House - The Editor Explores Mother/Son Relationships - I can’t lie. I was drawn to Steven Rowley’s novel THE EDITOR for the chance to spend time, even fictionally, with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The Shaman of Turtle Valley, Cifford Garstang, Braddock Avenue Books - A painting hangs over the fireplace in Clifford Garstang's home in rural Virginia of a temple with the Mountain God between two mountain ranges.
The Wartime Sisters, Lynda Cohen Loigman, St. Martins Press - Lynda Cohen Loigman was taking her first creative writing class at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College when she discovered the power of having a writing community to better her work.
Shelf Life of Happiness, Virginia Pye Virginia Pye had always written, but when she took a class from Annie Dillard at Wesleyan University in Connecticut she began to get a deeper sense of what writing requires.
The Collectors Apprentice, B A Shapiro, Algonquin Books - Art, history, romance, murder, and a cast of characters that includes Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Picasso propel B.A. Shapiro’s latest novel, The Collector’s Apprentice.
Another Side of Paradise, Sally Koslow, Harper Collins - Already an experienced writer, having worked as a journalist and editor-in-chief of McCall’s Magazine, Sally Koslow found herself out of a job.
