My poems can make a difference!

Poet Bio: Ellen is in the process of moving to Manhattan with her cockapoo Bailey and her cats Fiona and Cinnamon. In her free time she sits around remembering when her children, Nash, Anna and Zoe, were small. She is glad they are big now and she is proud of them. Ellen has written nonfiction for years, including a self-published book, Can Creativity Be Taught? McSweeney's Internet Tendency published 18 nonfiction columns of hers under the title "Diversity in the News." Kugelmass, A Journal of Literary Humor, published her humorous nonfiction essay "Tina Fey Ruined my Beach Vacation." Finishing Line Press published Small Fiasco this year, a book of poetry she wrote mostly made up of Tupelo 30/30 poems. She wrote a novel called Demo Queen, in case you are interested in publishing it. Her co-written screenplay "Demo Queen" won a small honorable mention for humor. She also wrote a humorous screenplay called "Phone Boy." Currently she is polishing a completed book of short stories, Life Imitates. Works in progress include a biography of the legendary cake designer Colette Peters told as a story of cake work and the changes in that industry. She is also turning her Ph.D. dissertation into a book called Coke and Work: Notes Towards a Poetics of Comfort, an academic reading of the poetry of Frank O'Hara and Philip Levine.

Author Statement: Ellen's personal poetry goals are related to her goals for her fifties: she wants to cut down on the code switching and become one person and one writer. Her poetry, then, will begin to incorporate more of the preoccupations that color her world as a nonfiction writer: food, women in the working world, creating new worlds by taking chances.

Your support gives me vital inspiration as I write for thirty days this month.

Tupelo Press provides the canvas, I bring my words, accompanied by other fine poets, writing thirty poems in thirty days, all ours to edit and submit as we wish. 30/30 poems have been taken by over 90 journals and featured in over 40 published chapbooks, all so Tupelo Press can keep publishing exquisite and diverse voices that might never be heard otherwise.

Every dollar gives me confidence to write more, and helps the press place more poems in gorgeous books. Help me to help this distinguished press. Give today!