Louise Ells combined random jobs (chef, roofer, co-pilot on a submarine) with years of travel before earning an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, and a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University. Louise has taught grammar, poetry, and fiction, and presented at academic conferences in London, Cambridge, and Vienna. She works for Cambridge Programmes, teaching at Churchill College, Cambridge, for two weeks every summer. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2017. She lives in North Bay.