Ellen L. Ekström is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and was educated locally. She holds a bachelor's degree in theological studies and her area of concentration is Christian Mythos, also known as church history, with a sub-specialty in Christian Social Ethics, for both of which she took honors. Ordained to the vocational diaconate in 2002, she is a clergywoman in the Episcopal Church and is retired from parish ministry, but still active in social justice issues.

Ellen has been fascinated by all things medieval since childhood and is now studying Late Anglo-Saxon England in preparation for two forthcoming novels, Swannsaeld, and The Sometime Queen-A Cheshire Tale.

The genres Ellen prefers to work in are fantasy/historical: her first novel The Legacy, a tale of fourteenth-century Florence and Tuscany, was followed by her retelling of the St. George and the Dragon legend, "Armor of Light," "St. Edmund Wood - Cheshire Tale," a story of Victorian England, and the sequel to Armor of Light, "Ascalon." Occasionally she delves into matters of the modern heart, as evidenced by her novels in the Midwinter Sonata series, "Tallis' Third Tune" and "Scarborough," which tell the same story of heart-break and love from different points of view, and "What She Wished For... a Cautionary Tale," a tale of what can go wrong when you meet the right person. Finally, Ellen penned the fairy tale for all ages, "The Shop Girl of Flowergate" - the chronicle of a princess who became a shop girl so she could become a princess again. Just as a painter has many subjects to bring to a canvas, Ellen believes that there are many stories to tell, and to limit oneself to a niche isn't the way she lives or thinks.