About Me
I write about ballet, literature, motherhood, and feminism.
Ellen O’Connell Whittet is a writer and continuing lecturer who teaches in the Writing Program and College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her debut novel, Book of Hours (Dzanc), was released in 2026. Her memoir, What You Become in Flight (Melville House, 2020) was named a most-anticipated book by Refinery 29 and Chicago Review. Her co-edited anthology, Family History—about living with an inherited risk of breast cancer—is forthcoming from Mayo Clinic Press in 2028. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is doing English doctoral research at Trinity College Dublin on autobiographical accounts of giving birth.
Ellen has written for The Cut, Time, Vogue, Paris Review Daily, Buzzfeed, Vulture, The Atlantic, New York City Ballet, Literary Hub, Prairie Schooner, where she won the Virginia Faulkner Award, the Harper Perennial Anthology The Moment (2012), on the Ploughshares Blog, and elsewhere.
She lives with her husband and two daughters in Santa Barbara, CA. You can follow @oconnellwhittet on Instagram.