Featured Interview With Paz Ellis
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in New Jersey and I am still a Jersey girl at heart. I now live on the west coast of Florida with my husband and two sons. We moved here after living on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma. Oklahoma is beautiful but it lacked my happy place… the beach! I have a writing companion named, Remi. He is a ten-pound Maltipoo that thinks he is a two-hundred-pound wolf!
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I grew up in a household of voracious readers. My father used to write Cuban folk songs and one of my uncles is a poet. Like my older sister, I kept journals from an early age and wrote poems and short stories. When I was about 12 years old my mother bought me my first hardcover book. It was a beautiful copy of “Little Women.” I looked at it and realized my name would be on a book cover one day. However, my first book was a product of grief. I wrote a memoir several months after my mother passed away and I have not stopped since that day.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ayn Rand, Jeanette Walls, Amy Harmon, Ken Follet, Ernest Hemingway, Frank McCourt and so many more! I love memoirs and historical fiction, and all the classics.
I am inspired by people, by love, and by life. All my books thus far have a piece of me or my family history as the inspiration or springboard.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
“Plantains and the Seven Plagues- A memoir: Half-Dominican, Half-Cuban, and Full Life” is a collection of memories, stories, love, pain, grief, and family connections. As a child born to a Dominican mother and Cuban father, I struggled with their assimilation as they became hyphenated-Americans as well as my own hyphenations. There were multiple moves, school bullies, few friends, and a large, loving family to help me find my way and grow into the person I am. Inspired by the recent passing of my mother, I found myself entrenched in the past looking for answers and resolution to my grief. The result is this memoir that I dedicate to the memory of my loving parents.
It was a surprisingly smooth quick book to write. I was so lost after I lost my mother that I began writing the stories my parents had told me about their lives when they moved to New York. I interviewed my uncle, my mother’s only living brother to get more details about their difficult childhood in the Dominican Republic. Before I knew what was happening, I had written a book. A few months later I wrote my second book, “Just Finn” about a young man with Asperger syndrome, inspired by my brother who also struggles with Asperger syndrome.
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