Meet Betsy

Welcome to my virtual studio. As both a writer and designer, I’m driven by a curiosity about the world. In my studio, I take that curiosity and use it to create new worlds. I write for kids and adults as well as a good deal of freelance non-fiction. Explore to find out more about me, my books, and my thoughts on writing as well as the thoughts of friends who stop by the studio. If you’ve got something you’d like to share reach out to me through the contact form. I’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to read what’s been happening in the studio.

Your Hero’s Journey
Wise Words Betsy Ellor Wise Words Betsy Ellor

Your Hero’s Journey

For her recent webinar, Kendra Levin used the Hero’s Journey as a way for creatives to keep their creativity alive through intense times like now. With pandemic, elections, remote-learning, job insecurities and so much more it is easy to undervalue our writing projects and ourselves as writers. Levin says . . .

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The Iceberg
Wise Words, KidLit Betsy Ellor Wise Words, KidLit Betsy Ellor

The Iceberg

Culture is like an iceberg. There are cultural markers like holidays, food, clothes, etc. that stand out as the the small tip of the iceberg obvious above the water’s surface. What we need is work that represents the mass of details, nuances, and variety that truly define a culture. No culture is a monolith, nor is any culture explained simply by their most obvious difference from mainstream white society, but these details are concealed below the surface. Writers have to do the work to get at the base of the iceberg if they want to portraying authentic minority characters. 

- From an SCBWI panel discussion with David Bowles, Linda Sue Park, and S.K. Ali

This idea was attributed to a talk Park attended by Leah Henderson. A perfect example of the goal of Words Unbound: share in the community, share the wisdom and we all grow together.

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