Mary Beth Ellis is a freelance writer living
perilously on the Beltway edge of Washington,
D.C. She has run
BlondeChampagne.com, a continuation of her newspaper column "Latitudes and
Attitudes," since 2003. Mary Beth has also been published on
MSNBC.com, and writes regular commentary for Dish Pronto, JamsBio.com,
and FreelanceSwitch.com.
A native of Cincinnati,
OH, Mary Beth obtained her
undergraduate degree at Saint Mary's College, and was the first SMC student
invited to read at the University of Notre Dame's Sophomore Literary Festival.
Her vast and frightening array of day jobs after completing her MFA in
nonfiction writing at Bennington College have included bodyguarding Jimmy
Buffett, working in education at the Kennedy Space Center, and sports reporting
for the Thoroughbred racing industry. She currently teaches college and provides public education services for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Udvar-Hazy.
Her work has appeared in two anthologies: Grotto Stories, andRandom House's Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. One of her essays will also appear in an upcoming college
textbook on composition from St. Martin's
Press. Other credits include Smithsonian Air & Space, the Cincinnati
Enquirer, Weber: The Contemporary West, Notre Dame Magazine,
and many more. She was named the Erma
Bombeck Humor Writers' Workshop Writer
of the Month in November 2006 and invited as a writer-in-residence at Casa
Libre in the spring of 2007.
