Four Questions on Farsickness: Lulah Ellender

Four Questions on Farsickness is an interview series with creative writers for whom place is essential to their work. Each writer answers the same four questions—and featured here is literary nonfiction writer Lulah Ellender, author of Elisabeth’s Lists (Granta Books, 2018), a family memoir. 1. Share a little about where you’re from. When you were growing up, what place—real or imagined—most fascinated you, and why? This is a hard question to answer! I was born in London, moved to Bristol when I was two then to a farmhouse called Brook Farm in the Wiltshire countryside from the ages of 8-11. When my parents divorced we had to leave that house (which I loved) and moved into a nearby town, and then when my mother moved in with my stepfather I moved to my dad’s house in Oxfordshire. At 19 I went to Liverpool University and spent my holidays between my parent’s houses. Brook Farm is the place that most has my heart. When we had to leave I felt utterly bereft and the house haunted me throughout my life: I would dream that somehow I would win it back, I’d make my friends drive two hours through the night so I could sit by the river next to the house and I would hatch plans to buy it. I think my love for it was partly to do with the landscape. We were free to roam and I knew the area intimately, as children do, knowing the places to swim, climb, run, hide and find quiet. The other reason I was so sad to leave is, I think, connected to my parents’ divorce. It felt like the end of my childhood. Ever since then I’ve felt a magnetic pull back to the West Country, to the soft, buttery stone and mossy river rocks.   2. What travel has been a particular inspiration to your work? My book, Elisabeth’s Lists, tells the story of my grandmother’s peripatetic life as a diplomat’s wife, and I travelled vicariously through her diaries, letters and book of lists. She lived in Persia, China, Brazil, Lebanon, Rome and Paris and as I researched the background to her life I tried to construct a sensory picture of each place – the sights, smells and tastes. Since having children I’ve hardly travelled but last year I was lucky enough to be writer-in-residence at the wondrous Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris for five days. It was glorious! I worked, walked, ate ice creams by the Seine and read books to the accompaniment of the bells of Notre Dame. I felt really inspired while I was there, and had insane dreams, as if all the thoughts of all the writers who had stayed there were somehow fizzing around the room!   3. Where do you “escape to” to recharge creativity? Between May and September I love to swim in our local outdoor pool. It makes me feel alive and gets the creative juices flowing. I’m lucky to live near the beautiful South Downs and find walking up in the hills also reboots everything. Even just pottering in the garden, thinking about plants and listening to our chickens, helps me work out ideas for my writing. 4. Where would you most like to travel to next? I would love to go to Iceland. It looks such a beautiful, other-worldly place.  

Lulah Ellender is a writer and editor living in Lewes, East Sussex with her husband, four children and various animals. Her first book, Elisabeth’s Lists, was published in 2018 by Granta and her work has featured in The Guardian, YOU magazine, Granta magazine, Caught by the River and Easy Living magazine, amongst others. Find her online on Twitter @tallulahloorah, on Instagram @lulahellender, and on her website, lulahellender.com.