An Inspiring Midlife Author interview with Ellen Birkett Morris

Plus three new novels set in small towns, and three standout podcast episodes

Hello, friends! As some of you know, I started the Midlife Authors series because I’m a late bloomer, fiction-wise: When I began to make my fiction-writing practice a priority, I was in my early forties. And when I finally got a book deal (with my fourth novel manuscript, and the second one that my agent sent out on submission), I was 53. On the one hand, I was thrilled that my novel would be published; on the other, I felt odd and alone—I wasn’t a young debut author, therefore something must be wrong.

But since then, I’ve met so many midlife debut authors that I know this trope of the young and winsome debut novelist is just a trope. And this series, Midlife Authors, is my way of pushing back at that trope, and offering inspiration from working writers—some are late bloomers, some have switched careers, and some have been working at their craft for decades. You can find others in the series here, here, and here.

New interview series: Midlife authors

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Ellen Birkett Morris

Today’s midlife author is Ellen Birkett Morris, author of the novel Beware the Tall Grass, winner of the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence, judged by Lan Samantha Chang, and Lost Girls: Short Stories, winner of the Pencraft Award. Ellen has published prize-winning short fiction (Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, South Carolina Review), and poetry (in heer chapbooks Abide and Surrender; and in The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Gastronomica, Inscape; she’s a two-time finalist for the Rita Dove). She teaches creative writing at The Virginia Piper Center at ASU in Tempe, AZ, and The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, KY.

Ellen has also written movingly about her “invisible” disability, cerebral palsy, in essays like this one for The Ethel. Here’s a brief excerpt from this beautiful essay:

“At 57, in the throes of post–surgical menopause, I am in search of myself. On some days, I am the capable woman who has authored books, built a career, forged strong friendships, cocreated a caring marriage and navigated the challenging medical establishment for years.

On other days, I am the child with cerebral palsy who walks on her tippy-toes, each step a balancing act, playing and singing to herself, making do with the small patch of grass in front of her as she hears the shouts of children playing in the distance, until she can, at last, collapse into the arms of her mother.”

Welcome, Ellen! Where/when did you notice the first glimmers of writing? Or to put it another way, when did fiction writing start calling to you more insistently?

I started writing fiction as a child. My first story was about a kid working for a boss who was a shape shifter. He would look like a tough guy one minute and Woody Allen the next (yes, I was that precocious kid). The boss and a young character with many similarities to me would get into adventures around the world. But after my early efforts, I set creative writing aside to work as an instructor and journalist before coming back to it in my mid-thirties.

It took a while to publish larger works. I published my first poetry chapbook, Surrender, in 2012, a short story collection, Lost Girls, in 2020, another chapbook, Abide, in 2021, and my debut novel, Beware the Tall Grass in 2024.

You wrote fiction early on, but as an adult, you’ve written in many genres. How did you get to novel-writing?

I started writing for children, and found I could not get the voice right. I went on to write poetry, which helped me learn the power of detail and image to build meaning in writing. From there I worked on short stories and published a collection, Lost Girls, in 2020 (at the height of the pandemic). I kept trying different forms and eventually I got the courage to work on novels. My debut novel Beware the Tall Grass won the Donald L. Jordan Prize judged by Lan Samantha Chang and was published in March of this year.

Ellen Birkett Morris’ second book and first novel, Beware the Tall Grass.

What do you know now as a writer that you wish you’d known starting out?

It takes as long as it takes to fully develop a book. You need to let the idea develop fully in your mind and decide how best to tell it. I wish I’d known earlier to relax and take my time. Process is everything.

And I’ve learned to enjoy letting each piece dictate what it will become: Some stories need more room and others work best told with precision; some topics are best handled as poems, others as essays.

Can you share a challenge you’ve faced with writing or publishing?

It’s tough to find an agent, even when your writing is good. I had one who wasn’t doing their due diligence and it tied up my novel for months. Be persistent in searching for the right fit, and talk to other writers about who is good and who to beware of.

What makes a midlife writer a stronger writer?

I know so much more about the world and myself. I’ve honed my writing and have a broader range of skills than I did when I was younger. I have stuff to say and experiences to share. All of that means that my work is richer now.

Can you share your advice for someone who’s just getting started with writing, or who thinks it’s too late? 

I am a debut novelist at 58. It is never too late. Take classes. Join a writer’s group. Stay open to feedback and write, write, write.

Tell us about your your novel Beware the Tall Grass.

Beware the Tall Grass is the story of an extraordinary connection between a boy and a Vietnam soldier, separated by decades but connected by trauma. With war as a backdrop and empathy at the heart of the novel, this dual narrative takes on the power of love and courage to meet unforeseen circumstances. Beware the Tall Grass weaves the stories of the Sloans, a modern family grappling with their young son Charlie’s troubling memories of a past life as a soldier in Vietnam, and Thomas Boone, a young man caught up in the drama of mid-sixties America who is sent to Vietnam. Eve Sloan is challenged as a mother to make sense of Charlie’s increasing references to war, and her attempts to get to the bottom of Charlie’s past life memories threaten her marriage, while Thomas struggles with loss and first love, before being thrust into combat and learning what matters most. My elevator pitch is that it is about a mother’s love and a soldier’s courage and how the two are related.  

And if you like, tell us about a book that you think deserves more attention.

I love Morning in This Broken World by Katrina Kittle, the story of a diverse group of people sheltering together during the Covid pandemic. It is a beautiful book about a very tough time in recent history.

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Three new novels set in small English or Irish towns

Long Island, Colm Toibin

The sequel to Tobin’s 2009 novel Brooklyn. Long Island is set 20 years after Brooklyn, with Eilis and Tony now parents to two teens and living in a suburban cul de sac with Tony’s parents, brothers, and brothers’ wives. Some surprising news upends Eilis and Tony’s relationship, and Eilis decides to return to her small hometown of Enniscorthy, Ireland, for the summer. Like Brooklyn, Long Island is a short novel, but this new novel opens up the point of view to include Eilis’s old connections Jim Farrell and Nancy Sheridan. A lot of the same charm as Brooklyn, in Colm Toibin’s restrained style, but this time the story is even more about the power of what these characters are unable to say.

Enlightenment, Sarah Perry

Though Sarah Perry’s new novel is set in 1997, it has a nineteenth-century feel, with hints of the love story-mystery of A.S. Byatt’s Possession.

Enlightenment opens on a late-winter Monday in 1997 in the office of the Essex Chronicle, the small newspaper in the small English town of Aldleigh. (Enlightenment shares its setting with Perry’s earlier novel The Essex Serpent.) Fifty-year-old Thomas Hart, who’s been quietly writing about literature and ghosts for twenty years, needs to write something new, his boss tells him, suggesting astronomy—the Hale-Bopp comet will soon be visible. That same day, Thomas receives a letter from the town museum with new information about the Lowlands ghost, who’s rumored to haunt the nearby Lowlands House, and who may be a nineteenth-century astronomer from Romania named Maria Vǎduva. These two small events will send Thomas on a quest to fill in the details of Maria Vǎduva’s life and work.

Intertwined with Thomas’ story is that of 17-year-old Grace Macaulay, who’s linked to Thomas through their small Baptist church; Thomas has also helped raise Grace, whose mother died in childbirth. Grace stumbles into her first love, which sets off a series of complications that will rupture Thomas’ and Grace’s friendship. The story follows Thomas and Grace over the next twenty years, landing on pivotal moments for both.

Enlightenment is a genre-mixing novel that’s tough to describe in a few sentences. But I loved its wry, omniscient narration that takes its time (again, like a 19th-century novel), and its preoccupations with science, faith, and magic.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Flying and Motorcycle Club, Helen Simonson

The new novel from the author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Summer Before the War. As The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club opens, the Great War has ended, the flu epidemic has passed, the men have returned. But for Constance Haverhill, the war’s end has brought an end to the work she’d loved, keeping the books for an estate. Now her prospects are uncertain and she’s stuck serving as a companion to the elderly Mrs. Fog at a seaside hotel. 

But soon, Constance’s lonely summer is interrupted by the motorcycle-riding Poppy Wirrall and her brother, Harris. The siblings and their mother are staying at the hotel while their grand house is renovated. During the war, Poppy and other young women delivered messages and supplies via motorcycle. Harris, a veteran who lost a leg flying bombing missions, is suffering and moody; he wants to fly again, but the world is telling him he can’t. The novel follows Constance, Poppy, and Harris through the summer, as the three struggle to find their way in a culture that’s not ready for change. More comic than The Summer Before the War, but less so than Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. For more, here’s my review for BookPage.

Let me know what you’re reading!

Three podcast episodes I loved

Gen X Middle School Dance Episode, Pop Culture Preservation Society

If you’re a Gen Xer, take an hour to listen to the PCPS women’s delightful take on long-ago middle-school dances. It will bring you back to the horrors and thrills of being a seventh-grader at a dance—the awkward slow dancing, the group trips to the bathroom, the sleepovers afterward. Worth it for the montage of evocative middle-school dance songs alone.

Steve Almond with Writers on Writing

Short-story writer, novelist, former Dear Sugar columnist, and teacher Steve Almond has a new craft book out (Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow), and I loved his interview with Marrie Stone, especially the concept that writing teachers aren’t oracles speaking from on high; they’re writers, failing along with their students.

Gloria Steinem on Wiser than Me

Julia Louis-Dreyfus interviews Gloria Steinem. At 90, Steinem speaks so cogently about her own story, the feminist movement’s history, and the current state of the world, and she’s funny! This lovely episode made me tear up, not only because Gloria Steinem is 90, and I can’t help but think about the passage of time and all we’ve gained and lost, but also because Louis-Dreyfus speaks movingly about her own friends before the interview; and at the end of the show, she interviews her 90-year-old mom to get her mom’s take on the interview.

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Mini garden tour below, more garden views next time…

Lilac next to our old barn. That’s our elder-cat Sugar in the blurry background.