Samantha Ellis is a playwright, journalist, and writer. She was born in London to Iraqi-Jewish parents and studied English at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Her non-fiction books include How to be a Heroine (2014) and Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life (2017). She has written prefaces for Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey (1847) and Amber Reeves’s A Lady and her Husband (1914) as well as working as a script editor on the movie Paddington (2014). Much of Ellis’s work addresses feminist topics and the struggle of British-Jewish identity.  In Cling to Me like Ivy (2010), Ellis explores the multi-ethnic, multi-religious world of contemporary London. It is one of the few plays to fully explore the world of Hasidic Jewry in Britain. How to Date a Feminist (Arcola Theatre 2016) is a fast-paced romcom that centres on a British-Jewish heroine with an Iraqi-Jewish/Israeli father and a male feminist friend. The play was successful in Britain, Germany and many other countries. In 2017, East 15 produced her play The Only Jew in England about secret Sephardi Jews at the court of Henry VIII.

For more information visit http://www.samanthaellis.me.uk/p/blog-page.html.

Plays

—. Cling to Me Like Ivy. London: Nick Hern Books, 2011.

—. How to Date a Feminist: A Romantic Comedy. London: Nick Hern Books, 2016.