Writing Archives - Ellen Morris Prewitt

Everett’s The Trees

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 12, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 4 Comments

Percival Everett’s The TREES is the most sarcastic, gut-punchingly funny novel about the Emmett Till lynching. As I type that sentence, I think, What the hell? In the apt words of one of the characters from The Trees, it is, “A sentence I never imagined myself saying.” Very on-brand that this book, which short-listed for the Booker...

Three Books and a Play

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 25, 2022. Posted in General, Writing. Leave a Comment

I write book reviews with trepidation. Even if I intend to be laudatory, what if it doesn’t hit the author that way? That’s important because the only reviews I write are of books I enjoyed. I figure the world is harsh enough without posting negative reviews (though I have been known to occasionally rant on Goodreads.) Last year I decided...

The Sentences that Create Us

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on October 9, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Writing. 6 Comments

Reading The Sentences that Create Us raises a question: how do we handle the adjectives that are appended to descriptions of writers? “Southern” writer. “African American” writer. The adjectives often encapsulate the heart of the writing. But they can also carry an implied—and often condescending—”only” (She is...

The Truth of High School

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on October 4, 2022. Posted in General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 6 Comments

Y’all wanna see the truth of what I looked like in high school? It’s a hoot. And now it’s out there for everyone to peep at. Why, you might ask? Well, I wrote an essay about my odd junior high and high school experience in the land of the integrating South. Journalist Ellen Ann Fentress was kind enough to publish the essay...

I’ve Joined Medium

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on September 14, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Writing. 8 Comments

No, I’m not becoming a seance aficionado. I’ve joined the writing site called Medium. I’m learning something new. Inspired by wonder-blogger Marie Bailey, I’ve joined Medium. But, as usual, I did things a**-backwards. I wrote a story for Medium, and I can’t figure out how to re-post it here. In the future, I’ll...

Writing Poetry Against My Will

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 30, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Writing. 8 Comments

I don’t write poetry, y’all. But a delightful writing group I’m a member of contains a wonderful and amazing poet. Her writing prompt this month was, “We’re gonna write some poetry.” Wait. Say, what? But I am nothing if not compliant. Usually that applies to medical instructions, PT exercises, and spiritual...

Six Month Literary Assessment

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 29, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Writing. Leave a Comment

I made a resolution at the first of the year. What was the resolution? To hold book conversations. Specifically, “I’ve decided that, with the enjoyment the books have given me, I owe the authors to get the word out on their work.” Let’s look at my six month literary assessment. So far this year, I’ve done 10 blog posts...

Opening Our Literary Eyes

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 24, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 4 Comments

I fancy myself embedded in a new strata of American history. That strata is white people gaining awareness of how whiteness shapes society. It’s a stupid conceit. White Americans have always known institutions were shaped for them. We only momentarily “forgot” for the years from, oh, 1972 to 2008. In our forgetting years, we told...

Writing in Troubling Times: Join Us!

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 19, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Writing. 2 Comments

Thursday @ 6:30 in a ZOOM conversation about writing in troubling times Register now for what promises to be a great Zoom conversation about writing in troubling times. Jarvis knows what he’s talking about—he wrote for the Times-Pic newspaper during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His Pulitzer Prize-winning columns are searing,...

Writing Home and Beyond

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 10, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Writing. 5 Comments

In 2014, Nautilus Press published the memoir, Writing Our Way Home: A Group Journey Out of Homelessness. The book was an intense year in the making. The authors, all of whom personally knew homelessness, selected their writings to include. A hoard of volunteers typed up the writings. Lawyers reviewed the draft to insure the writers weren’t...