Ducks Newburyport (Ellman) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—October, 18 1956
• Where—Evanston, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A.University of Essex; M.A., Courtald Institute of Art
• Awards—Booker Prize, shortlisted
• Currently—lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK


Lucy Ellmann was born in the U.S., to biographer Richard Ellman and writer Mary (Donahue) Ellman. The family moved to Britain when she was 13, and although she has said she always meant to return to American soil, she never did. She received her B.A. from the University of Essex and her M.A. at the Courtald Institute of Art. She now lives in Scotland.

Ellman's first novel, Sweet Desserts (1989), won the Guardian Fiction Prize. It was followed by Varying Degrees of Hopelessness (1991), Man or Mango? (1998), Dot in the Universe (2002), Doctors & Nurses (2006), Mimi (2013). Her most recent work, Duck, Newburyport (2019) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Her short stories have appeared in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Telegraph, New Statesman and Society, Spectator, Herald, Scottish Review of Books, Time Out (London), Art Monthly, Thirsty Books, Bookforum, Aeon, Evergreen, and Baffler.

A screenplay, The Spy Who Caught a Cold, was filmed and broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK. She edits fiction for the Fiction Atelier (fictionatelier.wordpress.com), and abhors standard ways of teaching Creative Writing, which she considers mostly criminal. (Adapted from the publisher.)