Ralph Ellis

Ralph Ellis launched his journalism career in the late 1960s by editing an underground newspaper created to protest his high school’s repressive dress code. His main argument, that Jesus had long hair, didn’t sway the school board.

A native of Waynesville, NC, he graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he majored in marijuana, minored in journalism, and wrote a few stories for the school paper, The Daily Tar Heel.
His first newspaper job was police reporter for The Times in Thomasville, NC. Thomasville was known as The Chair City because of its many furniture factories—and for the 30-foot-high, steel-and-concrete chair the town fathers built to celebrate that industry.

While still working as a journalist, he began writing fiction. He has completed two manuscripts about a fictional reporter named Ronald Truluck, who breaks the rules of journalism to get the story. The action takes place in the mean streets of small towns and suburbs in the Southeast—the locales Ralph knows best.

His first book is The Accident Report, which is scheduled to be published in 2025 by Black Rose Writing.

He published a short story in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Atlanta Writers Club. He lives in downtown Decatur, Georgia, with his wife Susan Puckett, a food writer he met at the newspaper. When he’s not writing, Ralph can be found walking around the neighborhood with Zena, the slowest greyhound in North America.