With Hong Kingston more seriously, and it spurred me both to work all the Specifically, it made me take the opportunity to study Kingston, it represented some of the first serious professional validation I The immediate financial problem of how to pay for the class with Maxine Hong You learned you had won the grant? Were you able to attend the award ceremonyįloored and delighted when I received the call. “Leap, and the net will appear” decision for me: that very day, I received aĬall from Linda Hengst telling me that I had won the Walter Rumsey Marvin Opportunity, and I had just that morning bitten the bullet, charged it on myĬredit card, and decided to worry about paying for it later. The class seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime

Maxine Hong Kingston, in order to begin what would become my first published

To splurge on a two-week writing class in Assisi, Italy, with literary hero Happens, I got the phone call about the Marvin Grant just after I had decided Impact you: your life, your career, your writing? The interview appears here for the first time. Ohioana Director David Weaver spoke to Ellis in the fall of 2017, interviewing as part of a series of conversations with past Marvin Grant winners. Among her other honors, Ellis was also the only author to have won two Lamba Literary Awards. Five years later, she won the Ohioana Book Award in fiction for her debut novel, “The Teahouse Fire.” Ellis and Anthony Doerr are, to date, the only writers to have received both the Marvin Grant and an Ohioana Book Award. In 2002, Ellis received the Ohioana Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant for a writer age 30 or younger who has not yet published a book. Sadly, Ellis passed away on February 15, at the young age of 46. So it seems fitting to pay tribute to one extraordinary woman and writer, Ellis Avery. March is Women’s History Month, and today happens to be International Women’s Day. (Ellis Avery at the 2013 Ohioana Book Festival, photo credit Elizabeth Nihiser)

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery