Ellen Akins is an American novelist from South Bend, Indiana.

After graduating from LaSalle Intermediate Academy in 1977, Akins earned a Bachelor of Arts in film production at the University of Southern California. As a young adult, Akins participated in Beyond Our Control, a youth-produced community television program.^{[1][better source needed]}

Akins worked with film producer Sydney Pollack before losing interest in the film business. Akins then earned a Master of Fine Arts in the creative writing program at Johns Hopkins University.^[2] In April 1993, she was awarded the Academy Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her fiction writing;^[3] she has also been given grants by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation,^[4] and won the Whiting Award in 1989.^[5]

Akins is the author of five books; the novels Home Movie, published in 1988 by Simon & Schuster,^[6] Little Woman, published in 1990 by Harper & Row,^[7] Public Life, published in 1993 by HarperCollins,^[3] and Hometown Brew, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1998, and the short story collection "World Like a Knife", published in 1991 by Johns Hopkins University Press. Akins has also taught at Western Michigan University, Northland College,^[3] and Fairleigh Dickinson University.^[8]

Akins lives in Cornucopia, Wisconsin.^[9]

• 1989 Whiting Award
• 1993 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

• Home Movie. Simon & Schuster. 1988. ISBN 978-0-67166-135-9.
• Little Woman. Harpercollins. 1990. ISBN 978-0-06016-362-4.
• World Like a Knife. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1991. ISBN 978-0-80184-288-7.
• Public Life. Harpercollins. 1993. ISBN 978-0-06016-753-0.
• Hometown Brew. Knopf. 1998. ISBN 978-0-67944-795-5.

• "Something You Won't Understand". The Southern Review. Winter. LSU Press. 1985.^[10]
• "Nobody's Baby". The Southern Review. Autumn. LSU Press. 1991.^[11]
• "A Modest Appetite". Perigree: Publication for the Arts. 2009. Archived from the original on 28 October 2012.
• "Her Delivery". Serving House Journal (2). Fall 2010.

• Profile at The Whiting Foundation