Missouri Libraries

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Ellen Massey, libraries, Missouri, Missouri Writers Guild, novels, poetry, Springfield, writing

As part of my role as this year’s president of the Missouri Writers’ Guild, I got to set up and work a booth at the annual conference of the Missouri Library Association. I’ve already expressed my fondness for libraries and librarians elsewhere in this blog, but I’ll just repeat it here…..librarians are one of civilization’s jewels! They uphold our American ideal of free access to ideas. It was a great pleasure to sit in our booth and visit with those who stopped by.

A special shout-out to other members of the Writers’ Guild who also held down our booth for a shift – Deborah Schott, our treasurer (pictured below), Laura Valenti, Ellen Gray Massey, Debbie Blades, T. W. Fendley, Lawrence Iles, and Betty McLane-Iles. Thanks for your participation!

The Writers’ Guild booth

Favorite Ozarks People – 3

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Ellen Massey, fiction, Missouri, Ozarks, writing

Ellen Gray Massey

Photo from the Lebanon Daily Record

I have admired Ellen Gray Massey for decades. As an English teacher in Lebanon, Mo., she took a page out of the Foxfire manual and set her students to recording and learning about the local folklore. The magazine they published, Bittersweet, did a remarkable job of documenting folkways in the Ozarks carefully and accurately, with little romanticizing but lots of respect. The articles from that magazine became a book — and then another.

She’s been retired for 25 years, but continues to write prolifically. Last time I checked, she was up to more than 25 books, mostly fiction, but some history and nonfiction as well. Her most recent, Footprints in the Ozarks, A Memoir, is out from Goldminds Publishing.

Ellen is a speaker, a longtime supporter of the Missouri Folklore Society, a life member of the Missouri Writers’ Guild, and an absolute treasure.