Ellen Prentiss Campbell is the author of the novels Frieda’s Song (2021) and The Bowl with Gold Seams (2016, winner of the Indie Excellence Award for Historical Fiction), as well as the short story collections Known By Heart (2020) and Contents Under Pressure (2016, nominated for the National Book Award). Her short fiction has been featured in numerous journals, including The Massachusetts Review and The MacGuffin. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, her essays and reviews appear in Fiction Writers Review, where she is a contributing editor, the Washington Independent Review of Books, The New York Journal of Books, and others.
“No matter how well-documented the history of a family home may be, there are gaps… I revel in the license to move into those uncharted spaces; to take a leap of faith from the springboard of memory into the untethered dimension of the imagination.” Ellen Prentiss Campbell on dreams, intuition, and following “the vapor trail of memory” in fiction.
“Olive, Again is in some ways—but not all—a surprising sort of sequel, just as Olive Kitteridge is a continually surprising person: blunt and gruff, but increasingly capable of both insight and empathy.”
“The author has said that Busara means ‘wisdom, insight, and common sense’ in Swahili and that the Busara Road is ‘Mark’s own path to wisdom and insight'”: Ellen Prentiss Campell on Busara Road, by David Hallock Sanders.
“Jenoff provides vivid and convincing detail, and the depth of her research is impressive”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviews Pam Jenoff’s historical novel centering on a group of female spies sent behind enemy lines during WWII.
“Reading The Dakota Winters entertains—like visiting a museum of ephemera, or skimming through decades-old back issues of People Magazine“: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Tom Barbash’s new novel.
“If writing is kintsugi on the page, kintsugi is the art of losing”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on returning to the writing life, her debut novel, and piecing together lives and art.
“With its ambitious blend of history and imagination, the novel might be at home on the reading list for a literature seminar cross-listed with urban studies”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Nathaniel Popkin’s new book.
“I love this story because it’s haunting, and hauntingly well-wrought”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell celebrates Josephine Jacobsen and her story “The Edge of the Sea.”
“Remember, as you read this small book, generally and specifically about love, remember that suffering is, after all, the Latin root for passion”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Julian Barnes’s new novel.
“. . .these two groups of women are indeed sisters under the skin, and these authors are sisters as well”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on connecting Nesbit and Otsuka through their use of first-person plural.
