The Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing is delighted to welcome author and teacher Ellen Hagan to our faculty. Ellen served as a guest workshop leader in writing for children and young adults during our Fall 2021 residency, and she will begin to mentor Spalding MFA and MA in Writing students in W4CYA in the Spring 2022 semester.
A writer, performer, and educator, Ellen is the co-author with Renée Watson of the young adult novel Watch Us Rise. Reckless, Glorious, Girl, her middle-grade novel in verse, will be released in February from Bloomsbury. She is also author of the poetry collections Blooming Fiascoes, Hemisphere, and Crowned.
Ellen’s essays, journalism, and poetry can be found in ESPN Magazine, She Walks in Beauty, Southern Sin, LitHub, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry in 2020 and has received grants from the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She holds an MFA in Writing from the New School and a BFA in theatre from the University of Kentucky. A member of the Affrilachian Poets, she was raised in Kentucky and now splits her time between Kentucky and New York City with her family.
Welcome, Ellen!