Ellen Wayland-Smith is associate professor of Writing at The University of Southern California. She is the author of Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well Set Table (Picador, 2016) and of The Angel in the Marketplace: Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (University of Chicago Press, March 2020). Her essays and reviews have appeared in Signature Reads, Catapult, The Millions, and Longreads.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Black Childhood as Idyll: On Vivian Gibson’s “The Last Children of Mill Creek”
Ellen Wayland-Smith reviews Vivian Gibson’s memoir of growing up in St. Louis....
The Utopian Turn in YA Lit
A new YA novel reimagines utopia in the era of climate catastrophe....
East of Eden: On Rachel Monroe’s “Savage Appetites”
Ellen Wayland-Smith reviews Rachel Monroe’s “Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession.”...
Treasures on Earth and in Heaven: On Briallen Hopper’s “Hard to Love”
Ellen Wayland-Smith reviews Briallen Hopper’s new essay collection, “Hard to Love.”...
(Again?) Again: Reading Leslie Jamison’s “The Recovering”
Ellen Wayland-Smith follows the narrative weave of Leslie Jamison’s memoir, “The Recovering.”...
The Alchemy of Pain: Melissa Febos’s “Abandon Me”
Ellen Wayland-Smith on Melissa Febos’s “Abandon Me.”...
Imaginary Children: “The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood”
Ellen Wayland-Smith on Belle Boggs's "The Art of Waiting."...
Oneida: The Christian Utopia Where Contraception Was King
Ellen Wayland-Smith examines her ancestors' history in the Oneida Community, a 19th-century religious commune....
