Lucy Ellmann author biography, plus links to books by Lucy Ellmann.

Lucy Ellmann

Novelist Lucy Ellmann was born on 18 October 1956 in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of biographer Richard Ellmann and writer Mary Ellmann (née Donahue). She moved to England at the age of 13 and was educated at Falmouth School of Art (Foundation degree, 1975), Essex University (BA, 1980), and the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA, 1981).

Her highly-praised autobiographical first novel, Sweet Desserts (1988), was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize. Both her second book, Varying Degrees of Hopelessness (1991), and her third, Man or Mango? (1998), were shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction).

Lucy Ellmann is a regular contributor of articles on art and fiction to Artforum, Modern Painters, the Guardian, the Listener, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also a screenwriter and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 1992. Her novel, Dot in the Universe, a comic, poignant tale, was published in 2003, followed by Doctors and Nurses in 2006, Mimi in 2013, and Ducks, Newbury in 2019.