Mary Beth Ellis is a freelance writer living perilously on the Beltway edge of Washington, D.C.  A native of Cincinnati, OH, she obtained her undergraduate degree at Saint Mary’s College, and was first SMC student invited to read at the University of Notre Dame’s Sophomore Literary Festival.  Her vast and frightening array of day jobs after completing her MFA in nonfiction writing at Bennington College have included bodyguarding Jimmy Buffett, working in education at the Kennedy Space Center, and sports reporting for the Thoroughbred racing industry. 

Mary Beth is a Thoroughbred racing columnist for Today.com at Along the Rails.  She is also a contributor to MSNBC.com, JamsBio.com, and FreelanceSwitch.com.  Her work has appeared in Random House's Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers and Grotto Stories. Other credits include Smithsonian Air & Space, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Weber: The Contemporary West, Notre Dame Magazine, and many more.

Since 2003, Mary Beth has run BlondeChampagne.com, a kinda-daily updated humor site.  She was named the Erma Bombeck Humor Writers' Workshop Writer of the Month in November 2006 and invited as a writer-in-residence at Casa Libre in the spring of 2007. 

And yes, she's married.  But she'd very much like to be friends.