Louise Ells grew up beside the Ottawa River, then combined random jobs (chef, caregiver, co-pilot on a submarine) with years of travel. The author of Notes Towards Recovery, a thematically-linked short story collection, Louise earned her PhD in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2017. Her novel, Lies I Told My Sister, was published in 2024.