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Ellen O'Brien is a legal researcher, writer, and poet. Her family's country is Guringai, but she grew up on Yuin land on the South Coast, and is living on Wangal land.
Her work has been published in a range of Australian periodicals, including Rabbit, Voiceworks, and Scum Magazine.
In 2021, she was one of six recipients of a Writing NSW mentorship for emerging writers from diverse backgrounds. She was a 2023 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow.
'It begins with a woman barely able to speak. The woman is me, and I am choking in my sleep. My partner mentioned it to me last spring – you know you stop breathing during the night, right? – and I shrugged, feigning disinterest in my body and its nocturnal patterns while thinking about a strange sensation that started a few years ago: visceral, physical dreams where my mouth would fill with peanut butter, the concrete-like spread sticking my molars and vocal cords together. More recently these dreams of choking have been tinged with COVID anxiety – I am sick, my dream self thinks, so I must stay away from others. I looked up the interpretation of these dreams and learnt that they signalled swallowing an unpleasant part of your life until it can no longer be seen, spoken of, or heard.' (Introduction)
