Ellen Robertson Green

Ellen is an award-winning journalist who spent more than thirty years writing for television. As a PBS documentary producer, she earned the Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Her work was also recognized with a Barbara Jordan Award from the Texas Governor’s Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities for excellence in communicating the lived realities of people with disabilities. 

After decades of telling other people’s stories, she turned to fiction to explore the deeper truths that don’t always fit inside the facts.

Her novel, A Little Off the Charts, centers on fifteen-year-old Tess Marshall, who stands just under four feet tall, noticeably small even among gymnasts. On the balance beam, she feels steady and in control in a way she does nowhere else. Her mother, Naomi, is the most trusted news anchor in Ashvale, Texas, known for her composure and carefully curated life. When Tess suffers a devastating fall and receives a diagnosis that threatens her future in the sport she loves, she must imagine a life beyond the beam. At the same time, the strain fractures Naomi’s polished public image and exposes fault lines in her marriage. Mother and daughter are forced to reconsider the identities that once defined them, discovering that the lives they imagined are not the only ones worth wanting.