Ellen O’Connell Whittet is a continuing lecturer in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara who studies creative nonfiction, media, dance writing, arts writing, and trauma. In 2024, she was awarded a Bazerman Fellowship to conduct research on how trauma-informed pedagogy impacts the creative nonfiction classroom, and won UCSB's Distinguished Teaching Award. Her memoir, What You Become in Flight (Melville House), was published in 2020, and her novel, BOOK OF HOURS, is forthcoming next Fall. Her creative nonfiction and journalism has been published in Time, Vogue, The Cut, The Atlantic, Vulture, The Paris Review, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere.