As a corporate attorney in 1980s Mississippi, Ellen founded the Health Law Section of the Mississippi State Bar and served as its first president. She was the managing partner of her office and named to the Top 40 under 40.
When Ellen turned to writing, her first book introduced a new form of active prayer using broken and found objects (Making Crosses: A Creative Connection to God, (Paraclete Press, 2009)). Her second book was a self-narrated collection of short stories (Cain’t Do Nothing with Love) which won the CIPA-EVVY Audio Book award and whose stories have been downloaded over 50,000 times world-wide. She self-published two novels and created a hand-sewn novel with her talented friend Marisa Whitsett Baker.
Her short stories have twice been nominated for Pushcart Prizes; one received a Special Mention. She was the Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon College Summer Writing Program. Sue Silverman included her essay in Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir (University of Georgia Press, 2009) as an example of how to use metaphor.
Her work has appeared in Hotel Amerika, Brevity, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, River Teeth, Texas Review, Gulf Coast, Barrelhouse, EAP the Magazine, Fourth Genre, Arkansas Review, and elsewhere. She constantly interrogates the racism of her beloved American South.
For eight years, Ellen facilitated a weekly writing group of Memphians experiencing homelessness which culminated in the group’s memoir, Writing Our Way Home (Triton Press, 2014), which Ellen edited. For this work, she was named an Upstander by Facing History and Ourselves, and Champion, Memphis and Shelby County Homeless Consortium.
Ellen is known to appear in public in costume.
