Less than a month to go before our inaugural Speak Up storytelling event at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. May 4 at 7:00 PM. Admission is free. Today I’m proud to introduce our fourth storyteller, Ellen Painter Dollar.
_____________________________
Ellen Painter Dollar
Ellen Painter Dollar is a writer who focuses on disability, faith, parenting, and ethics. She blogs for Patheos (a religion and spirituality web portal) on these topics and more, with a particular interest in the ethical questions raised by modern reproductive and genetic technologies.
Ellen believes that telling and listening to stories is the only fruitful way to have meaningful conversations around difficult questions facing our culture. Most of her writing consists of telling stories (her own and others’) rather than taking sides or arguing positions.
Her first book, No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction (Westminster John Knox, 2012) tells her story of growing up with a disabling bone disorder, and having three biological children, each of whom had a 50 percent chance of inheriting the disorder.
Ellen lives in West Hartford with her husband and three children, who are 13, 9, and 7. Having recently received the astoundingly depressing first-year sales numbers for her book, Ellen’s current goal as a writer is to “go big or go home,” meaning she is working to reach more and wider audiences, impress editors, and even get paid now and then. 
Ellen Painter Dollar, Writer
Author of No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction (Westminster John Knox, 2012)
Co-founder of #It Is Enough, an informal coalition of Christians using social media to keep issues around gun violence and the need for stronger gun laws on the national agenda.
