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Mary Relindes Ellis

Goodreads Author

Born

in Glidden, Wisconsin, The United States

Website

http://www.maryrelindesellis.com

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction

Influences

Many: among them, Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison,Frank Waters, Mic ...more

Member Since

January 2008

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/mrellis

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Mary Relindes Ellis was born in Glidden, Wisconsin. After attending a business school to obtain certification as a legal secretary, Ellis then went on to get a B.A. in English Literature with an emphasis on minority and women’s literature. Throughout her life she has worked at a number of positions: cleaning cabins at an upscale resort; assisting her mother, who was a public health nurse; working as an administrative staff support member for entomologists, wildlife and fisheries biologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, engineers, architects, and eventually as the associate administrator in the English Department at the University of Minnesota. She formerly owned a 100-acre farm, co-operated a Christmas wreath business, and grew local ge Mary Relindes Ellis was born in Glidden, Wisconsin. After attending a business school to obtain certification as a legal secretary, Ellis then went on to get a B.A. in English Literature with an emphasis on minority and women’s literature. Throughout her life she has worked at a number of positions: cleaning cabins at an upscale resort; assisting her mother, who was a public health nurse; working as an administrative staff support member for entomologists, wildlife and fisheries biologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, engineers, architects, and eventually as the associate administrator in the English Department at the University of Minnesota. She formerly owned a 100-acre farm, co-operated a Christmas wreath business, and grew local genotype prairie seed for prairie restoration.

She began her writing career publishing short stories. Her first novel, The Turtle Warrior, won the Wisconsin Library’s Association’s 2005 Banta Award for Literary Achievement, was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Awards, was an Official Pulpwood Queens Book Club Selection, made Amazon.com’s 25 fiction picks of 2004, and was a BookSense Pick. Her fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train magazine, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Bellingham Review, and in anthologies such as Uncommon Waters: Women Write About Fishing, Gifts from the Wild, and Bless Me Father: Stories of a Catholic Childhood. Her essay, “The Big Cow: Writing in Flyover Land,” was published on-line by Powells.com.

Ellis has given countless informal talks, speeches, and conference calls to libraries, radio stations, book clubs, weekend retreats, and bookstore audiences. Other credits include serving as the keynote speaker at the 2004 Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards and the Writer in Residence at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls in April of 2008. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship. Her second nove, The Bohemian Flats, will be published April 2014 (January 2014 in France), and she is working on her third novel ...more

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Combine Editions
Mary Relindes Ellis’s books

Average rating: 4.04 · 1,570 ratings · 238 reviews · 5 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Turtle Warrior 4.04 avg rating — 943 ratings — published 2004 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Bohemian Flats 4.03 avg rating — 624 ratings — published 2014 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Clair Obscure - Nouvelles by Eliette Abécassis, Maxence Fermine, Yasmina Khadra really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Le guerrier tortue (Totem) by Mary Relindes Ellis (Goodreads Author), Isabelle Maillet (translator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Turtle Warrior[TURTLE WARRIOR][Paperback] by MaryRelindesEllis, Mary Relindes Ellis (Goodreads Author) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Mary Relindes Ellis (?)

“My hope is that someday people will embrace difference, not hate it.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

1 likes

“Quoting the American president Thomas Jefferson during one of their tutorials: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

0 likes

“Be careful not to romanticize them,” she cautions. “My father didn’t spend much time in the United States but he did live for a while in South America and traveled to the Congo. He said that to romanticize a people and their culture was a form of condescension. That it creates illusions that eventually breed contempt. Because those romanticized cannot live up to the illusions they never asked for.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

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Polls

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

by Allison Hoover Bartlett

10 votes, 24.4%

The Seed Keeper

by Diane Wilson

6 votes, 14.6%

Anything Is Possible

by Elizabeth Strout

6 votes, 14.6%

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

5 votes, 12.2%

Pride of Eden

by Taylor Brown

4 votes, 9.8%

The Hustler

by Walter Tevis

3 votes, 7.3%

The Turtle Warrior

by Mary Relindes Ellis

3 votes, 7.3%

At the End of the Matinee

by Keiichirō Hirano

2 votes, 4.9%

Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

2 votes, 4.9%

A Passage North

by Anuk Arudpragasam

0 votes, 0.0%

41 total votes

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