Ellen Barker
Author Interview - Ellen Barker
Author of Still Needs Work and The Breaks
About The Breaks:
Waking up in the emergency room with a broken arm was not one of the ways Marianne imagined her first date with Carl, if it is a date, ending up. Nor was driving up to the entrance of a women’s prison a few weeks later anywhere on her radar. But here she is. At least I’m on this side of the gate. She picks up newly released Stephanie, as a favor to a nun she barely knows, returns to her East of Troost home, and finds herself immersed in a whole new drama.
It’s a contemporary story of two single women – one middle-aged and recovering from life’s setbacks; the other 20-something and newly out of prison – coping with their very different realities while living in the same house.
About Still Needs Work:
Marianne gets the call while attending a conference in San Francisco: laid off, department dissolved. Two days later, she’s back home in the dicey Kansas City neighborhood she moved to after a reversal of fortune two years ago. After all this time rebuilding her life, it’s all collapsed.
The daily grind is just that—a grind. Until it isn’t, until it’s gone and taken health insurance, retirement contributions, and the currency to buy food and shelter, never mind the free coffee at the office, along with it. In the aftermath of her layoff, Marianne tries all the usual routes to re-employment, but a middle-aged woman, regardless of experience, has little job cred in the tech world, especially with an address in the heartland. A contract job at a Chicago startup morphs through two acquisitions in eight weeks. And then she’s mugged in her own neighborhood, which frightens her enough to consider a permanent move away.
An irreverent look at the alien denizens of the tech world, the fraught business of mergers and acquisitions, and the parallel universe of job openings, Still Needs Work is a contemporary story of the working world wrapped around a very human story of one person, her dog, and her community.
Author Interview - Ellen Barker
Author I draw inspiration from:
2025: Laurie Frankel. She has such a deft way of telling an engrossing story and weaving in all this information about something I maybe thought I knew about but didn't really get. A perfect example of this isThis is How it Always is:
2024: Catherine Ryan Hyde - all of them! I love how she writes a compelling story with interesting characters, and also conveys a message, usually related to a social issue. Not a preachy message, more like . . . just information. One Hispanic man's experience in New York, for example, in Have You Seen Luis Velez?. A middle-aged woman down on her luck plus a kid in the system (in Allie and Bea). The moral quandary in A Different Kind of Gone.
Author Interview - Ellen Barker | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
2025: Flying solo, where I'm unlikely to be interrupted. Especially if it's my lucky day and I've gotten an upgrade to business class.
2024: In the kitchen, with coffee or wine. It's a long way from my favorite place as a kid. Then, I'd climb up to the top of the maple tree in the back yard, out of reach of my brother. I'd take a sofa pillow and cookies and a book, wedge myself in, and read until it got dark. No one ever saw me, even in winter when the leaves were off the tree - no one ever looks up!
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
2025: Martha, in Shrug, by Lisa Braver Moss. I so want to know if things worked out for her.
2024: Carlotta from James Hannaham's Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta. Her personality alone could fill up an elevator. She would be a lot of fun while we're waiting for help, and if necessary I think she'd be bad-ass enough, and inventive enough, to get us out of there.
Author Interview - Ellen Barker | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
2024: Around the time I learned to read - and I don't remember a time when I couldn't read. As a kid, I'd walk around narrating my life as though it were a book. Then in seventh grade, I won an essay contest, and then the senior English award in high school. So I knew I had a chance at it. And every few years, I'd try something and fizzle out. But I didn't have the big IDEA to get started until much, much later. One day in 2019 or so, I just sat down and started writing. The time had come.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
2024: I love hardbacks, but they take up a lot of space and are heavy for traveling.
Paperbacks are my favorite compromise.
ebooks are a good alternative and portable, but bad for reading in bed - plus I still like leafing through a book.
I don't like headphones or earbuds, so I don't "read" audiobooks, but I love them because the give so many people access to books they can't read because they don't have time, need the distraction while doing tedious work, can't see well enough to read, or are learning a language by simultaneously reading and listening.
The last book I read:
2025: I'm in the middle of Jackie, a novel by Dawn Tripp. In the author's note, she quotes E.L. Doctorow: "The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like." And that's what Dawn Tripp has done. She's written a first-person, present-tense account of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis that stays true to Jackie's adult (public) life but fills in her thoughts and feelings in a way that only fiction can.
2024: I'm currently reading Blank by Zibby Owens. I like her writing style and the story (so far) surrounding the book (called Blank) that she is publishing. I'm not sure yet about the book itself, but I'm intrigued by possible story arcs and am looking forward to finding out where she goes with this.
Author Interview - Ellen Barker | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
2025: Laptop, always. And I'm a pantser, not a planner. I find out what will happen as I write it. If I plan it out ahead of time, I cannot make the characters do what I planned for them. When I'm revising, I do amend a little, sometimes, although that can be tricky. But I put a lot of effort to getting the facts around the fiction correct. This book is set in Kansas City, Missouri, and I wanted to make sure the places were accurately portrayed.
2024: Laptop, always. Even before computers I composed on a (manual) typewriter. For one thing, it's faster than writing, so it's easier to keep up with the scene that's unfolding in my head. Sometimes I think I'll print it out and mark it up, but then it seems too tedious and I never actually do it. So - I like the IDEA of pen and paper, but it doesn't work for me.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
2025: Clara, in Never Coming Back, by Alison McGhee. She did what Marianne did in my book: Went back to where she grew up and neverinamillionyears planned to go back. And she dealt with a slowly declining mother, as I did.
2024: Alice Holtzman in The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin. I was sorry when I finished that book and am hoping for a sequel. Even better would be moving into the story, in Oregon, and being friend and neighbor to Alice. We both like solitude and open spaces and bees and chickens and dogs. I don't have bees or chickens so I could enjoy hers without the work.
Author Interview - Ellen Barker | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
2025: Artist. It's a hobby that somehow complements writing fiction. I paint fictionalized versions of landscapes, sky-scapes, seascapes. I'm currently painting semi-abstract faces (because I can't paint actual portraits) for a little exhibit in a local market space.
2024: Watercolor artist. Currently a hobby and a good counterpoint to writing fiction. Ironically, selling a single painting is what made me say to myself: Self, if you can paint something that someone else will pay money for, surely you can write that book.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
2024: I love the look of the 1940s with all that beautiful tailoring, but I wouldn't want to wear it every day. I'd rather wear the casual side of the late 1960s, when women were free of all those hats and stockings and white gloves of the 1950s. For business attire, today is the best for women (goodbye pantyhose, stilettos optional!).
Place I’d most like to travel:
2025: I've been itching to tour the small U.S. National Parks in the west: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capital Reef, and Zion.
2024: Rural Europe: Spain, Italy, Germany, France. The scenery, hiking, food, and wine. And I can manage with my limited Spanish and not worry about drinking water.
My signature drink:
2024:
Morning: iced coffee
Evening: a dry but fruity red
My husband and I make red wines, so we always have plenty on hand. Some days, though, I just want something fresh and fruity and delicious, so I'll order a drink in a bar based solely on the picture or the amount of fruit in the description. It's usually pink.
Favorite artist:
2025: I'm fickle. This changes every day.
2024: Sooo hard to choose. For the moment, if pressed, I'll say Monet. Tomorrow it could be someone else.
Number one on my bucket list:
2025: Zip-lining in a redwood forest
2024: Hiking in the Alps, which is high on the list because (fingers crossed) it's happening later this year and I can't wait.
Anything else you'd like to add:
2025: I keep writing fiction because sometimes it's the best place to shout the truth.
2024: Writing fiction has been such a wonderful experience for me. I love hearing from the readers of East of Troost (my first novel), and I can't wait to hear from readers about Still Needs Work. There will be one more book set in the same place with the same narrator, and then I'll move on to a new locale.
Find more from the author:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550221886112
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-barker-6a4a366/
https://www.instagram.com/elrubar/
https://ellenbarker.substack.com/
About Ellen Barker:
Author Interview - Ellen Barker
Ellen Barker grew up in Kansas City during a period of demographic upheaval, and she returns there in her novels. She has a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from Washington University in Saint Louis, where she developed a passion for how cities work, and don’t. She began her career as an urban planner, then spent many years working for large consulting firms, first as a writer-editor and later managing large data systems. Her volunteer work involves years of pet-assisted therapy with children in “the system,” both foster care and prison. She is the author of East of Troost, which introduced readers to the neighborhood where The Breaks takes place, and Still Needs Work, which takes place in the same area. She now lives in Los Altos, California, with her husband and their German shepherd, Boris, who is the inspiration for the dog in this novel.
