About Ellen
Teacher, rider, writer
I was born in Washington, and lived in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, California, British Columbia and Idaho growing up. I was one of those little girls who go inexplicably horse-crazy and never recover. I was in love with horses and books by the time I was in third grade, about the same period in which I "played school" and taught my five year old brother to add, subtract and multiply (since he grew up to major in physics and work for Microsoft, I guess no serious harm was done!).
I wrote my first poem when I was eleven, got my first horse when I was twelve, and soon became interested in training, especially for combined training, dressage and jumping. I always preferred horses of predominately Thoroughbred or Arabian blood, so when I first read about the Hungarian horses in Western Horseman when I was about sixteen, I was intrigued, though I wasn't to meet one for nearly thirty more years.
I was helped in my first years of horse ownership by the Equestrianaires 4-H club in Idaho Falls, so it was natural that I begin volunteering with 4-H and the USPC as an adult. For years I was DC and/or instructor of the now-inactive Skyline Pony Club, and I still volunteer one afternoon a week with our local English 4-H riders.
I graduated from the University of Utah in 1982 with a degree in Elementary Education and an English minor, and have been teaching in one position or another (I have taught all the grades from third through junior college) all but one year since. I now also have an M.Ed in Secondary Education from Utah State. I didn't get to ride or write a lot in those years when our boys were young and I was first teaching, but I never gave either up completely.
Now that the boys are grown up, I am finding a little more time for my horses and my writing (poetry, essays, and a prospective young adult novel which I hope to have finished in draft form by spring of 2005). I teach at Sanpete Academy (the nearby public alternative high school) and for Utah's Electronic High School. I also enjoy gardening, cooking, quilting, and occasionally playing my guitar.