Ellen’s newest book, titled We Could Die Doing This, Dispatches on Ageing from Oregon’s Outback, is a collection of essays, published by Source Media, and was released late 2024.

Ellen Waterston was named Oregon Poet Laureate in August 2024 for a two-year term. Also in 2024, Ellen received the Stewart H. Holbrook Award and the Soapstone Bread and Roses Award.

Reviews of We Could Die Doing This include the following from renowned poet and writer Judith Barrington:

As a self-described “woman of a certain age,” and also a winner of multiple writing awards, Ellen Waterston is superbly qualified to offer wisdom on the subject of ageism. Most of us, whether of that “certain age” or simply approaching it, need to listen to her thoughts on the joyful possibilities of “the third act”; she believes that “this phase of life is as rich, complex and dynamic as any before it.” Whether addressing gun control, gay rights, or the sound of the tiny tree frog, as it emerges to welcome spring, she displays a wealth of knowledge from her roots in central Oregon to her travels, most recently in Bhutan. She seamlessly merges personal stories with useful data, writing with the sure hand of an experienced creative writer, guided by a researcher’s curiosity. Her subjects are relevant to a wide variety of younger and older readers; for those wondering about retirement, ever the wordsmith, the writer claims that “The Spanish got it right. Their word for retirement is jubilación.

Released May 2020, Ellen Waterston’s third nonfiction title, Walking the High Desert, Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail, University of Washington Press, received strong praise:

“There is no better guide to Oregon's high desert than Ellen Waterston. Her sense of place, her lyrical love of this sometimes hard to love place, her balanced yet passionate dissection of the issues roiling the big land of junipers and open sky is a wonderful match for her subject. While the West is full of poets who love the land, few of them are as intellectually nimble as Waterston.”

-Timothy Egan, author of A Pilgrimage to Eternity and columnist for The New York Times

Ellen is also the author of a collection of essays, Where the Crooked River Rises, Oregon State University Press; a memoir, Then There Was No Mountain, Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group; and four poetry titles: Hotel Domilocos, Moonglade Press, Between Desert Seasons, Wordcraft of Oregon and I Am Madagascar, Ice River Press. Her fourth poetry title and verse novel, Vía Láctea, A Woman of a Certain Age Walks the Camino, published by Atelier 6000, she subsequently converted to a libretto. It premiered as a full-length opera and is slated for a second staging.

Her award-winning essays and poems have been featured in many journals and anthologies. Poetry awards include the WILLA Award in Poetry for two of her collections and the Obsidian Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants and residencies. She was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by Oregon State University Cascades for her accomplishments as an author and poet and her promotion of the literary arts.

As a literary arts advocate, she is the founder of the Writing Ranch which offers workshops and retreats for established and emerging writers. She was the founder and, for over a decade, the executive director of The Nature of Words, a literary arts nonprofit featuring an annual literary festival in Bend, Oregon and creative writing workshops in regional schools, social welfare programs, and at its literary arts center’s Storefront Project. She subsequently founded the Waterston Desert Writing Prize which, in 2020, was adopted by the High Desert Museum. This Prize annually recognizes a nonfiction book proposal that examines the role of deserts in the human narrative. Waterston is on the faculty of OSU Cascades MFA Low Residency program.

Writers Reading: The Source Weekly Annual Poetry Contest
Watch this YouTube video of poets, including Ellen Waterston, reading their winning submissions. Co-produced by the Source Weekly, the Deschutes Public Library and the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Oregon State University-Cascades.