Ellen Wayland-Smith is the author of two books of American cultural history, Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table (2016) and The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (2020). Her most recent book, The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self, was published in 2024. She is a professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California.
Ellen Wayland-Smith
Articles
What Would It Take to Re-Sacralize Nature?
Ellen Wayland-Smith admires how Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?” places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we regard as mere backdrop to human activity.
Sleepwalking to Madness in Mid-Century America: On Audrey Clare Farley’s “Girls and Their Monsters”
Ellen Wayland-Smith is haunted by Audrey Clare Farley’s exposé, in “Girls and Their Monsters: The Genain Quadruplets and the Making of Madness in America,” of white American mid-century pathologies.
The Missing: On Sasha LaPointe’s “Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk”
Ellen Wayland-Smith explores the meanings of exile and impermanence “Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk” by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe.
Of Grace and Pain: On Ashley C. Ford’s “Somebody’s Daughter”
Ellen Wayland-Smith explores Ashley C. Ford’s “Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir.”
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.”
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