Ellen Phethean runs Diamond Twig Press, which she founded with Julia Darling. She also works as a poet, playwright and editor.
Ellen began performing her poetry and plays on radio and stage with The Poetry Virgins, a women's performance poetry group. Her work appears in Sauce (Bloodaxe Books) and her latest book of poems Breath is published by Flambard Press, 2009. This work is largely the result of her part-time creative writing MA at Newcastle University, which helped her through the last few years, after the death of her husband Keith Morris, and Julia, within two months of each other in 2005. To quote the book cover: "These poems explore love, loss and the life that insists we carry on", but Ellen says they also contain candid observation and humour.
She was writer in residence for Seven Stories, The Centre for The Children's Book, Ouseburn, and Writing On the Wall project. This inspired Wall, a novel in poems, telling the story of troubled teenager Kylie, and published by Smokestack Books in February 2007: a poem from Wall, Down the Dene, was our March 2007 Poem of the Month.
She finished a second novel in similar form, Hom, dealing with a teenaged lad from the West End of Newcastle. Unfortunately, the cross-genre form is not popular with publishers, so it is languishing in her bottom drawer. Undeterred, she is now on the third novel. This is for children, set in a fictional past and is a completely new subject matter. Ellen is just enjoying herself, learning how to write prose.
In August 2009 she was commissioned by Gala Theatre, Durham to write a new play for the Mystery Cycle, to be performed in May 2010. Along with her 22 year old Musician/rapper son Fred, she proposed Cain and Abel in Hiphop style. They have written a first draft and have to provide the final performance script by December 2009. She has never worked professionally with her son before, but they are both finding it an exciting and productive process, learning skills from each other. The plays will be performed outdoors by groups of young people from the Durham area.
She also teaches Writing for Children to adults at The North East Centre for Lifelong Learning and runs workshops. Ellen writes the Diamond Twig Diary and likes to keep everyone waiting for it.
