Major Works
- Under Surge, Under Siege: The Odyssey of Bay St. Louis and Katrina (2010)
Biography
Ellis Anderson grew up in Charlotte, NC. She lived for a time in New Orleans before she moved to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. She is an award-winning freelance writer and photographer.
Anderson has a B.S. from Lipscomb University in Communications and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, Nonfiction, at the University of New Orleans.
After riding out Katrina in her town of Bay St. Louis, she began blogging about her experiences and then detailed the bizarre life of the community for the next three years. Some of the essays from the blog are included in her book, Under Surge, Under Siege: The Odyssey of Bay St. Louis and Katrina which is published by the University Press of Mississippi.
The book was = short-listed for the International Saroyan Book Prize by Stanford University Library in 2012, the 2011 winner of the Mississippi Library Association’s Author’s Award for Non-Fiction, and in 2010 was the winner of the Eudora Welty Prize.
Anderson is publisher and editor of The Shoofly Magazine which depicts life in Bay St. Louis. She is a board member for The Arts in Hancock County, serving rom 2012 to 2014. She is also a member of the Bay St. Louis Historic Preservation Commission. In 2018, she became co-chairman of the Commission.
Anderson is owner of Ellis Anderson Media, LLC, which consults on using new media to support and enhance community-building projects. She founded the business in 2005.