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. The Stories section carries personal essays and short fiction drawn from a lifetime of observation; some pieces are composites, and none pretend to be reportage. What he promises is that the details ring true and the feeling is earned.

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