Ellen Urbani

Posts by: Ellen Urbani

There Is No Such Thing as a True Story

March 1st, 2016

Perspective is a fickle beast, and memory is an unreliable traveling companion through the years.

Ellen Urbani is the author of Landfall (2015), a work of historical fiction set in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the memoir When I Was Elena (2006), a Book Sense Notable selection documenting her life in Guatemala during the final years of that country’s civil war. She has a bachelor’s degree from The University of Alabama and a master’s degree from Marylhurst University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and numerous anthologies, and has been widely excerpted. She’s reviewed books for The Oregonian, served as a federal disaster/trauma specialist, and has lectured nationally on this topic. Her work has been profiled in the Oscar-qualified short documentary film Paint Me a Future. A Southern expat, she now resides on a farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.