Ellen Woods

Warriors in Transition, Ellen Woods' debut memoir, was published in Oct 2014 by Word Project Press. See her website: https//ellenwoods.info/ and view her reading "The Green Dragon", an award winning story--which later appeared in her book-- at www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNDHUWev4Q0.

Writing is her third career. Though she studied English as an undergraduate, she was captivated by the 1960's civil rights movement at UC Berkeley and became a legal worker in her twenties working with criminal and family lawyers. She studied psychology in her thirties, completed a masters degree, and began a career in mental health. In her forties she became a full-time mother and a practitioner of meditation, then at fifty returned to work in mental health as a county psychiatric social worker. She retired from Alameda County Medical Center at sixty-six and has been writing full time since then.

Her writing evolves from her childhood in Indiana and her move to Berkeley the 1960's, as well as her experience as a mother, a meditation and spiritual practitioner, and a supporter of civil rights, women's rights, tenants rights, and the rights of the mentally ill.

She writes and publishes in literary magazines and has won awards in literary competitions. She participates in writing groups, and reads at local venues, including recently appearing as a guest curator and presenter at Bay Area Generations (a reading series for the ages).See her reading "Ruby's Grace", the first story in Warriors in Transition, at the September 2014 Lucky 13 show at Hotel Rex in San Francisco. bayareagenerations.com