We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katie Lee Ellison. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katie Lee below.

Katie Lee , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

I’m a Pisces, so I’m not one for superlatives. Anything I describe as -est immediately makes me think of something that competes. But I’ll say that it gets me right in the heart when anyone decides to say something nice about Nonfiction for No Reason, the org I run. Whether it’s a DM or an email, a public statement into a mic or on social media, if it’s a reader, an audience member, someone who runs a venue, a mentor, a teacher, or a writer I admire: it means everything. I put so much of myself into NFNR and creating a community that supports itself, that people love, and use to get inspired. When I hear back that it’s working, it’s the best. I know it can be hard for people to speak up and say what something meant to them, so I don’t take it lightly, and it helps keep me going.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My biggest focus right now is building Nonfiction for No Reason, an international literary event series based in Seattle, and working on my own writing. I finished my MFA in 2014, and it was at that point it became clear to me that three things are required to be a writer: to write, to read, and to have a community. It takes a lot more than that, to be honest, like therapy and sleep and healthy food, maybe meditation, television, chocolate, among other things, but those three are baseline. Especially for writers of nonfiction, memoir, essay, prose, or mixed forms: you’re going into your past and doing some really hard personal work to tell your story. That’s why community comes in so critically: the support, the fellowship, the mirroring is all needed to stay sane, to keep laughing, to keep living your life and not be consumed by the project and your own past. Obviously a great therapist helps with this an enormous amount as well, but because community and collective support have always been a critically important part of my life, and not one I always felt I had, I’ve really dumped myself into the success of NFNR.

When I decided to run the first one, I was writing a really hard essay and it was going through edits for publication. I needed to share it with a live audience and feel the collective reception of that work to see how the writing would hit in a room and to not hold it on my own or with a couple of very dear and incredible editors. From that first event, I felt the power a reading can have for readers and audience members, and I also wanted more and more platforms in which nonfiction is given the space and seriousness of other genres. It can be just as entertaining, engaging, impressive, life-changing, fun, and funny as any other genre. So I wanted to create a feeling of a big stage, but with a healthy dose of self deprecation to keep the room from getting too heavy. I wanted a space where recognizable writers could experiment and take risks, and writers not-so-known could bring their whole selves and their own experiments to the stage in great company.

The long-term picture with NFNR, and something that’s already begun to happen, is that people are finding agents and publishers through these events. At the events in Tokyo, it seems like there’s a big opportunity there for more books to be translated as a result of those who meet in those rooms. In 2025, I plan to bring NFNR to lots of new cities in the U.S. and outside, so that this community becomes an international network, giving readers and audience members a chance to strike up conversation and hopefully make more art. If you follow NFNR on socials or through the newsletter, A Beautiful Fad, I consider you part of that network. My next big project is figuring out how to put everyone in touch with each other. Stay tuned on the front.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m still unlearning this one, but as much as this organization is for other people as much as it is for myself, I have to remember not to do things solely for other people. What I do might look exactly the same either way, but I find that doing things solely for the purpose of pleasing or helping others quickly puts you in a martyr position, and that’s no fun for anyone. With the exact same action, I can be aware of how it’s helping me as much as someone else, and it changes the experience. It becomes an “us” effort immediately and even if the other person is dissatisfied, it doesn’t ruin the experience for me, because I know what I got from it.

There are so many backstories to this lesson, but I think like any of them, it started with my family. I had to learn really early that I can’t save anyone, nor is it ever my place to play g-d like that. Whatever pain or struggle someone else is going through, it’s fair and human and sometimes even appropriate to dig in and do what you can to help someone. The line is when I feel myself starting to give from my own well, and by the time I feel it, it’s often too late. But I think this lesson is a really big one for people in the arts. I think it’s societally acceptable now to believe that we just get to play all day, so we owe it to everyone to work harder and longer and faster. This toxic belief denies the life-saving value of art in our world, and it wears down artists so that we fit the martyr trope: mentally ill, addicted, unstable. We’d all be a lot less likely to live that story out if we were cared for and encouraged to care for ourselves. And of course, I speak very much from my own experience and internalized beliefs and thinking.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It has brought the most rewarding and incredible relationships into my life. As someone fulfilled by exchange of ideas and inspired by strong, intelligent people, being an artist has put me in communication and relationship with people I’d never get to meet otherwise. This is an invaluable gift.

Likewise, writing also introduces me to parts of myself I’d never otherwise find, and it makes me a better friend, partner, and citizen. In writing for so many years, I must remain awake and aware of experiences far beyond my own lived experience, and that is a gift and a responsibility I’m honored to have access to.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nonfictionfornoreason.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nonfictionfornoreason/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/k.lee.ellison/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieleeellison/
• Twitter: How about BlueSky instead? https://bsky.app/profile/katieleeellison.bsky.social
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Nonfiction4NoReason