Martin Ellsworth

Martin Ellsworth writes the Stories section of PinkArmy: short personal essays about the everyday material of a life - kitchens, tools, photographs, phone calls, the things people keep and the things they finally let go of. His research is a different discipline from the guide writers', but it is a discipline. He works from notebooks and attention, and when an essay touches a fact of the world - a date, a place, how a thing was made - he checks it, because even a small piece deserves to be true wherever it can be. His voice is quiet and specific; he distrusts the grand statement and trusts the small object that proves it. Martin Ellsworth is a pen name, disclosed openly: a real writer who prefers privacy, writing under a stable name so readers can follow the work. He makes no claim to authority of any kind, and his essays give no advice - not financial, not medical, not even the gentle life-lesson kind. A story about a parent's house is a story, never estate planning. What he promises is honesty of observation: what he describes was really seen, and nothing on the page pretends to be more than it is.

74 articles