Tap the gear icon above to manage new release emails.
Follow Ellen Pall to get new release emails from Audible and Amazon.
I've written more than a dozen novels, including two mysteries, two mainstream "literary novels" (I hate that designation; it always sounds so serious and highfalutin, as if any comic elements would be beneath such books, but that seems to be what they're called), a psychological thriller called Must Read Well (2022) and a whole passel of Regency Romances (essentially drawing room comedies set in the era of Jane Austen) under the pen name Fiona Hill. (No relation to the British-born Presidential Advisor!)
Fiona Hill gave me a toehold as a writer, and nowadays I like the Regencies I wrote--some of them are really funny, especially the last few, as I can see 40 years after writing them. But after a while, I felt chained to them; they were the only way I knew to earn my living. By the time I'd turned out nine Regencies, I was very eager to write under my own name. I was thrilled when I finally published "Back East" -- by Ellen Pall.
For ten years, I also freelanced as a journalist, writing about the arts, mostly for the New York Times Magazine and Arts & Leisure sections.
I've always loved books, and started "writing" at age eight by telling myself stories about a magical world of tiny people who lived inside the flowered pattern of my bedroom wallpaper. I am never without a book I'm reading. I love small, domestic novels about contained worlds, good writing, surprising images, and the occasional large novel (Knausgaard's "My Struggle") or politically reverberant one (Jenny Erpenbeck's "Go, Went, Gone" or Edna O'Brien's "The Red Chairs," both superb). Also well-written mysteries--Laura Lippman is a favorite.
I've lived in Manhattan for many years. My husband is a well-known and very, very busy human rights lawyer. Our son, creative in many fields, is an artist and entrepreneur in LA.
I hope you will try one or another of my books and will enjoy the ones you choose!
Read more
Read less
