Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. She also writes the Vintage Cookbook Mysteries, the Catering Hall Mysteries (under the name Maria DiRico) and will soon debut a new series, the Golden Motel Mysteries.

Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.

An alum of New Orleans’ Tulane University, she blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America, serves on the national board for Mystery Writers of America, and will be the 2023 Left Coast Crime Toastmaster.