Ellis's play
The Candy Jar was produced at the
Edinburgh Fringe in 1996. It was the runner-up for the 1996 National Student Drama Award for Playwriting. She worked as a journalist, and wrote a column on theatrical history for
The Guardian newspaper. Her play
Patching Havoc was produced at
Theatre503 in 2003. Her radio play
Sugar and Snow, set in the
Kurdish community in north London, was produced on
BBC Radio 4 in 2006 and given a reading at the
Hampstead Theatre. Her short play
A Sudden Visitation of Calamity was produced at Menagerie Theatre in 2008. In 2010 her play
The Thousand and Second Night was produced by
LAMDA. In 2010, her play
Cling to Me Like Ivy, published by
Nick Hern Books, was produced by the
Birmingham Repertory Theatre and went on tour. In 2012, she was a founder member of women's theatre company Agent 160. Her book
How to be a Heroine was published by Chatto & Windus in January 2014; and her biography of
Anne Brontë,
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life was published in January 2017. In the same years, Ellis worked on the screenplays of
Paddington and
Paddington 2. In 2016, her play
How to Date a Feminist was produced at the Arcola Theatre. The Evening Standard called it "witty, slyly provocative and simply downright lovely" and Exeunt called it "a whip-smart romp...wonderfully funny.". It has been produced several times in Germany and other places. Her third book,
Chopping Onions on My Heart, was published by
Chatto & Windus in 2025.
The Guardian called it "a linguistic feast", and
The Observer called it "a gift to the future". ==Bibliography==