Abide, from NPR's A Way with Words
Samples of My Work
ELLEN BIRKETT MORRIS , AUTHOR OF LOST GIRLS AND SURRENDER
Advance Praise for LOST GIRLS:
"The stories in Ellen Birkett Morris's collection, Lost Girls, are memorable for the way they see the lasting truths that reside within the familiar. These stories are full of imaginative leaps that capture the wildness that lies beneath our seemingly ordinary lives. Morris is a writer of extraordinary talent. With elegance and precision, she can turn a story into something luminous and unforgettable."
--Lee Martin, author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Bright Forever
"Ellen Birkett Morris is a skillful literary pointillist. In Lost Girls, her debut collection, each spare sentence is as considered as a poem; step back a little way, and you behold a world."
--David Payne, author of Barefoot to Avalon
A dazzling collection of stories that showcases Morris' impressive ability to hide devastating truths within seemingly small moments.
--Jenny Offill, author of Weather, Dept. of Speculation and Last Things
This collection of stunning and original stories kept me turning the pages, eager to meet the daughter who eats the sins of others, the 30-year-old virgin who rents a breast pump, the bereft mother drumming away her grief. Ellen Birkett Morris's Lost Girls draws us so close that before long, we are inhaling the same air, making the same unexpected discoveries, and deeply longing for each of these girls and women to find their private rainbows.
-- Masha Hamilton, author of five novels, including 31 Hours and The Camel Bookmobile
Ellen Birkett Morris is an award-winning, multi-genre writer, teacher and editor based in Louisville, Kentucky. Morris is the author of LOST GIRLS, a forthcoming short story collection, and SURRENDER, a poetry chapbook.
Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, South Carolina Review, Fiction Southeast, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Upstreet, among other journals. She is the 2015 winner of the Bevel Summers Prize for her story "May Apples" and the Betty Gabehart Prize for Fiction.
Her poetry has appeared in Thin Air Magazine, The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Alimentum, Gastronomica, 3Elements Review and Inscape, among other journals. Morris won top prize in the Binnacle Ultra-Short Edition and was a finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Morris's plays have appeared in Mud City Journal, Monologue Bank, and Plays, The Drama Magazine for Young People. Her ten-minute play, "Lost Girls," was a finalist for the 2008 Heideman Award given by Actors Theatre. "Lost Girls" received a staged reading at Cincinnati's Arnoff Center.
Morris teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky. She has contributed articles to national publications including Cooking Light, www.DrKoop.com, and www.womensenews.org.
Her essays can be found in trade paperback books including NESTING: IT'S A CHICK THING, THE WRITING GROUP BOOK, THE GIRLS' BOOK OF LOVE, and THE GIRLS' BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP, in journals including Brevity blog,The Common, The Butter, The Fem and South Loop Review, and on National Public Radio.
Her interviews and reviews have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, New Orleans Review, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Reading Ireland, (Louisville) Courier Journal, Best New Fiction and Authorlink.com.
Morris has an MFA from the Queens University-Charlotte low residency program. She has received grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Kentucky Arts Council, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She is the recipient of a 2013 Al Smith Fellowship for her fiction, given by the Kentucky Arts Council.
News and Events: Appearances, Readings, Classes
Read Ellen's Work
Check out some of Ellen's fiction, poetry and essays here.
See Ellen's background here.
For seminars, workshops, speaking and editing engagements.
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