Mary Relindes Ellis was born in Glidden, Wisconsin in 1960. She has a B.A. in English Literature with an emphasis on minority and women's literature from the University of Minnesota, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2009) She began her writing career publishing short stories. Her first novel, The Turtle Warrior, won the Wisconsin Library's Association's 2005 Banta Award for Literary Achievement, was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Awards, was an Official Pulpwood Queens Book Club Selection, made Amazon.com's 25 fiction picks of 2004, and was a BookSense Pick. Her fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train magazine, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Bellingham Review, and in anthologies such as Uncommon Waters: Women Write About Fishing, Gifts from the Wild, and Bless Me Father: Stories of a Catholic Childhood. Her essay, "The Big Cow: Writing in Flyover Land," was published on-line by Powells.com. See her website for more information: http://maryrelindesellis.com/