Lisa Cooper Ellison
Writer, Editor & Coach
What i do
Manuscript Evaluation
Developmental Editing
Coaching
Classes and Seminars
Mindful Writing
Getting Started
“The best part of this work has been watching other writers blossom.”
About Lisa Ellison Cooper
Lisa Ellison is a freelance writer, editor, and writing coach. She teaches memoir and the art of story telling at WriterHouse, a nonprofit writing center in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work and life story are forthcoming or have appeared on NPR’s With Good Reason, and in The New Guard Review, The Kenyon Review, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Guardian, and Streetlight, among others.
of their stories one word at a time.
Testimonials
Slow Pieces Blog
Dialogue Lab One: Dialect versus Diction
In early October, my father experienced a medical emergency that sent me to Upstate New York. During his recovery, I spent three weeks in my childhood hometown. During hospital visits and errands, I listened to the conversations around me—not just what was said, but...
The Death of Sonny
This personal essay was a finalist in the Hippocampus Literary Magazine's Remember In November Contest “Without smoke, you can’t see the light.” My husband Alex said this to me while explaining why professional tours use fog machines in their light shows. The...
Four Backstory Traps and How to Escape Them
This summer, I experienced a similar backstory trap as I revised my memoir. Despite everything I tell students and clients, I found myself loading early chapters with backstory about my childhood experiences. The problem had my internal editor on high alert. Every move felt wrong, and yet I continued to scramble around in the past, believing it was all essential.
As I continued to wrestle with this problem, I researched common backstory traps to see which one I’d fallen into.