When Ellie Nelson retired from a career in exploration geology, an occupation she shared with her husband working mostly in remote places like the Outback of Australia, Irian Jaya (Indonesian New Guinea), and Chile, she redirected her time to her lifelong calling—writing. She wrote her first little play when she was ten, her first novel at fifteen, and earned a B.A. in English literature from Syracuse University. Writing was in her blood as she came from a family where almost everyone was a published author. When she started to write creatively after her years as a geologist, she wrote … and wrote … and wrote until she had produced a 700-page literary fiction tome. Several more-experienced writers tactfully suggested she needed to condense her thoughts and hone her writing skills. So, for the next few years she focused on short. She wrote short fiction, short memoirs, short mysteries, short general interest pieces and even short poems. Many of these works, some award-winning, have been published in anthologies and literary journals such as The Oasis Journal, Celebrating Animal Rescue, The Story Teller, A Way with Murder, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. More recently she has returned to novel writing. Two are currently in progress.
Her early years were spent in New York, Connecticut and Maine, but she has been a resident of Arizona since attending graduate school in geology at the U of A. She is an accomplished equestrian, a dog lover, and a longtime member of AMW.
