The Lost Women of Azalea Court

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 […]

Her Sister’s Tattoo

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 […]

On Hurricane Island

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 […]

House Arrest (2nd Edition)

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 […]

Kinship of Clover

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 […]

House Arrest

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

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 […]

THE LOST WOMEN OF AZALEA COURT Receives Glowing Review by Mom Egg Review!

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 […]

Short Play Based on Ellen Meeropol’s HER SISTER’S TATOO Set for Live Reading!

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 […]

TEA BY THE SEA (Donna Hemans) and HER SISTER’S TATTOO (Ellen Meeropol) shortlisted for the Story Circle’s Women’s Book Awards!

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 […]

“Fourth Estate” by Ellen Meeropol

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 […]

Her Sister’s Tattoo on The Bill Newman Show April 13th 2020

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!

Gridlock: A Precursor to Her Sister’s Tattoo

“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 […]