On a chilly November morning, eighty-eight-year-old Iris Blum goes missing from Azalea Court, a six-bungalow development on the grounds of a long-closed state mental hospital. Her husband, Asher Blum, was the last head psychiatrist at the hospital and is writing a book about the treatment of mental illness. Their daughter Lexi, the neighbors, and police […]
Two sisters. One badly injured cop. A family torn between loyalty and politics. Rosa and Esther Cohen march through downtown Detroit in August 1968, protesting the war in Vietnam in harmony with their family’s tradition of activism. The march is peaceful, but when a bloodied teenager describes a battle with mounted police a few blocks […]
As a major hurricane threatens the northeast, math professor Gandalf Cohen is abducted by federal agents and flown to a secret interrogation center off the coast of Maine. Austin Coombs, a young local resident, is a newly hired civilian guard assigned to the detention center. Henry Ames, a man of personal secrets, is the FBI […]
Home care nurse Emily Klein usually loves her work. But her new assignment, prenatal visits to a young woman under house arrest for the death of her toddler daughter during a Solstice ceremony, makes her uneasy. Maybe it’s Pippa Glenning’s odd household and the house arrest monitor. Or the court involvement that reminds Emily of […]
He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he […]
Home care nurse Emily Klein usually loves her work. But her new assignment, prenatal visits to a young woman under house arrest for the death of her toddler daughter during a Solstice ceremony, makes her uneasy. Maybe it’s Pippa Glenning’s odd household and the house arrest monitor. Or the court involvement that reminds Emily of […]
Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest, and the play Gridlock. Essay and short story publications include Ms. Magazine, The Writer’s Chronicle, Guernica, and The Boston Globe. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Prize, the Women’s National Book Association, the […]
I grew up in a family reluctant to tell stories. Like about Elizabeth, my grandmother who left Russia and immigrated to Brooklyn. Did she really participate in the 1905 Menshevik revolution as a young woman, as my mother claimed? Was she really exiled to Siberia and her husband (or brother or uncle) helped her escape […]
Northampton author Ellen Meeropol used her first four novels to explore how a range of social and political issues, from the rise of the U.S. security state in the aftermath of 9/11 to the divisiveness of the Vietnam War, played out in the lives of different people. In her newest book, “The Lost Women of […]
Ellen Meeropol is a fearless writer. When she picks up her pen and follows her characters, she goes to places and situations lesser writers might avoid: a young pregnant woman awaiting trial (House Arrest, 2011); an innocent academic pulled aside by airport security and incarcerated in a secret holding cell (On Hurricane Island, 2015); a […]
Novelists are, by definition, imaginative people, but there are a limited number of ways to promote a new novel. We rely primarily on readings and events to transform our words on the page to a dramatic life for an audience. Face to face; voice to ear. This is not easy during the pandemic. For Cai Emmons, […]
Greenfield, MA – Set in an unspecified re-purposed building in a small Western Massachusetts town, Northampton author and playwright Ellen Meeropol’s GRIDLOCK tackles issues of climate change and radical activism as two sisters reunite after a fifty-year separation. On Friday, June 11, a public reading of this work-in-development will give audience members and artists the chance to hear […]
The Sarton Awards are presented in four categories (memoir, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, nonfiction). The award program is named in honor of May Sarton, who is remembered for her outstanding contributions to women’s literature as a memoirist, novelist, and poet. Sarton memoirs, novels, and nonfiction books are distinguished by the compelling ways they honor the lives […]
Even with all the extra “free time” sheltering in place gave us this year, there was a lot going on. Between learning how to work from home, helping kids with virtual learning, struggling to pay the bills, and finding new ways to cure months-long bouts of boredom, it was hard to get a breath in edgewise. Curling […]
Everyone loves a good list and there are no shortage of book recommendations from celebrities, media outlets and booksellers. I love looking at my overcrowded shelves and this year I added even more fantastic books. (FYI, the books I have read on the left and books I want to read on the right!) I had […]
Join Writers in Progress on December 3rd for a Virtual reading + book launch with three authors, including one Red Hen author Ellen Meeropol!
“even if I’m still skeptical that the 1960s qualify as historical fiction! A story of sibling love and tensions set against a backdrop of protests of the Vietnam war.” Listen to the rest of the interview here!
I first saw the painting 30 years ago, when I walked into friends’ tenth floor apartment on Manhattan’s upper west side. My children immediately hurried to the large window, excited by the sight of the Clearwater sloop sailing down the Hudson River. I stood in front of a large painting hung on the white wall […]
Ellen Meeropol speaks with the local North Hampton news radio on the Bill Newman Show to discuss the book launch of Her Sister’s Tattoo. Listen in for an inside scoop on the influences and process behind Her Sister’s Tattoo. Listen here!
Her Sister’s Tattoo begins in the heat of August 1968, as sisters Esther and Rosa Cohen, daughters of union activists, march against the war in Vietnam. When a young man is beaten badly by police, Rosa persuades Esther to join her in a daring and risky action to stop the violence, but things don’t go […]
“My sister Ruth showed up on day four of the blackout, the day we began to suspect this wasn’t an ordinary grid failure. There had been no blizzard, no fragility of the coming western Massachusetts winter. The utility company issued no major wind event. It wasn’t even that cold, though the early November air already […]
