Ellen Birkett Morris is an award-winning, multi-genre writer, teacher, and editor based in Louisville, Kentucky.
Morris is the author of SURRENDER (Finishing Line Press). 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 2008 Binnacle Ultra-Short Edition and was a semi-finalist for the 2009 Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, South Carolina Review, Sliver of Stone, Great Jones Street, 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 won the Betty Gabehart Prize for Fiction.  Her story “Like I Miss Being a Ballerina” was selected as an Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train Press Family Matters short story competition. “Lincoln, Maw and Shorty” received an honorable mention in the Saturday Evening Post fiction contest. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice.
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 was on the faculty of the 2018 Antioch Writers Workshop and will appear at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference in 2019.
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.

Books by Ellen Birkett Morris

Lost Girls: Short Stories is out now! Order your copy here!