Courtesy photo / Ellen Prentiss Campbell (right) listens to a reader while attending a book- signing event. Campbell lives in Washington, D.C., but has a home in Manns Choice and has strong ties to Bedford County.

Washington, D.C., resident Ellen Prentiss Campbell was only a teenager when her parents purchased a perfect weekend getaway home in 1968, located in Manns Choice.

The rural home eventually grew on Campbell when she inherited it after her parents passed away, becoming her personal writer’s retreat to work through grief and tap into her love of writing.

Inspired by the local landscape, including the Omni Bedford Springs Resort & Spa, Campbell published her debut novel “The Bowl with Gold Seams” in 2016, which received the National Indie Excellence Award. Her short story collection “Contents Under Pressure,” also published in 2016, was nominated for the National Book Award.

With two novels and short story collections under her belt, Campbell recently released her latest historical fiction book, “Vanishing Point,” which follows several voices from Pittsburgh-based artist George Hetzel’s family over three generations at their final home in Somerset.

“Pennsylvania is very deep in my roots, and I really feel like I owe my writing life to Pennsylvania and Somerset,” she said. “It’s so important to me.”

Campbell’s statement tracks, as she was born in Bryn Mawr before her family eventually moved to the suburbs of Rockville, Md., for her father’s job opportunity.

As a child, her parents fostered her love of reading and writing by asking her about the best and worst things that happened each day after she listened to a bedtime story. They penned her responses in a red spiral notebook before reading them back to her.

“It was very powerful for me because it gave me the feeling that you can hold onto experiences and deal with experiences by putting them on the page,” she said.

That love for writing followed Campbell into middle school, where her sixth grade teacher read Campbell’s palm and predicted that she’d become an author one day. That teacher also chose Campbell’s short story for illustration by a real artist at a book fair.

She graduated from Sandy Spring Friends School in 1971 before attending Smith College for a bachelor’s degree in English. For a college paper, she also interviewed poet Joseph Brodsky.

After college, she worked as a paralegal in various places during the late 1970s and met her future husband and attorney, Harry Pskowski, at a friend’s birthday party. Sparks flew, and they were married in 1980.

She considered going back to law school for a while, but decided that law wasn’t for her, so she applied to Simmons College for a master’s degree in social work instead.

From there, Campbell practiced psychotherapy for about 30 years while raising three children with Pskowski in Maryland, leaving little time for Campbell to tap back into creative writing.

“Busy, absorbing years went by,” she wrote on her website. “I never completely shelved the aspiration to become a writer; I would do it ‘later.'”

In the early 2000s, 9/11 shook the nation and Campbell’s personal life, having roots in both Washington, D.C., and Bedford County.

“It was a profound event for all of us,” she said. “It was a game changer.”

Meanwhile, both of her parents passed away around that time, leaving the Bedford home to Campbell and her family. She worked through the grieving process by writing in their home on the weekends. And it was there when she began to shift her career path into writing full-time.

Flowing with history

With a master’s degree in writing from Bennington College, Campbell started drafting her first historical fiction novel, “The Bowl with Gold Seams” (2016), set during World War II at the Omni Bedford Springs Resort & Spa.

Being a short walk from her home in Bedford, she frequently embarked on adventures around and inside the abandoned hotel before it was reconstructed in 2007.

She quickly became engrossed in the facility and began to conduct research at the Bedford Historical Society, finding out that the resort housed captured Japanese diplomats posted to Germany during World War II.

She said it was an unusual history for a resort hotel, but it dovetailed with the papers and letters she found in her parents’ attic while her father served in World War II.

“I’m also intrigued by history and events beyond our control, and art helps us get through difficult times, and that’s true for all of my novels,” she said.

Dorothy Reno, classic-book columnist for the Washington Independent Review of Books, said “The Bowl with Gold Seams” struck a new chord, as it follows a young woman working with the Japanese at the end of World War II inside Bedford Springs.

“It’s a beautiful book about love, sacrifice and trauma,” she said.

Readers can also tell how much Campbell cherishes rural Pennsylvania throughout her works, Reno said, writing about its captivating environment while paying homage to the people through their dialogue and energy.

“She cherishes the smaller towns,” she said.

Attorney and writer Jake Oresick also included Campbell’s novel for its regional elements in his bibliography, “The Pittsburgh Novel: Western Pennsylvania in Fiction and Drama, 1792-2022.”

Campbell makes her Western Pennsylvanian settings feel real and lived in, he said. “She writes the places she knows and does so expertly.”

A new subject

While going through the publication process of “The Bowl with Gold Seams,” Campbell travelled to the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art location in Loretto to see artwork created by Bedford native Kevin Kutz.

While viewing the artwork, she stumbled upon a 19th-century landscape by Pittsburgh-based artist George Hetzel, who also founded the Scalp Level School of painting.

“I loved the idea of a colony of artists in this beautiful area, and it perked my interest,” she said, adding that she frequently participated in writers’ retreats and residencies at the time.

But she didn’t begin writing “Vanishing Point” until the COVID-19 pandemic, when she conducted research about Hetzel’s life, also uncovering the compelling lives of his children and grandchildren, especially Hetzel’s daughter, Lila, who studied art in Pittsburgh against Hetzel’s wishes, and his granddaughter, Dorothy Kantner, who was a writer.

“I became intrigued by Lila and why she never achieved the level of fame that her father had, and then I became equally, if not more, drawn to Lila’s daughter,” she said.

To capture the novel’s setting, Campbell travelled to the Somerset home that originally belonged to the Hetzel family after Kantner died in 1977 and developed a relationship with the new homeowners, who shared their wealth of knowledge about the Hetzels with Campbell.

At the end of May, she released her third historical fiction novel, “Vanishing Point,” through the Apprentice House Press.

“Ellen is a gifted writer, whose works are both authentic and novel,” Oresick said. “I consume a lot of fiction and see the same dozen plots reproduced in different flavors — but not with Ellen.”

Home place

There is no question in Campbell’s mind that she will write more fiction inspired by Bedford and the surrounding areas.

While she’s not writing anything at the moment, she’s having fun with book promotions and events. She also writes blog posts for the Washington Independent Review of Books under her column, “Girl Writing.”

She and her husband continue to visit their Bedford residence for weekends or getaways. She particularly enjoys purchasing flowers from the Posie Patch at Bedford’s summertime farmers markets.

“It’s been my home place since 1968,” she said.

As someone with deep ties to Bedford County, she said it’s important for residents to understand the region’s local history, whether it be through fictional novels or research.

“Just like people, every person has a backstory, and if we know and understand our moment in time, we need to know what has happened here,” she said.

Reno said that Campbell has a tenderness in her stories, even when writing more difficult characters, which is what makes her so successful as a writer.

And even though Campbell started her writing career later in life, Reno said that doesn’t hinder Campbell’s ability to captivate readers with her lines.

“I don’t see her as someone who wouldn’t have a second act, and she was probably a writer all along,” Reno said.

Mirror Staff Writer Colette Costlow is at 814-946-7414.

The Campbell file

Name: Ellen Prentiss Campbell

Age: 73

Family: Husband, Harold Pskowski; children: Rebecca,

Timothy and Martha

Residence: Washington, D.C.

Education: Green Acres School, Sandy Spring Friends School (1971), bachelor’s degree in English from Smith College (1975), master’s degree in social work from

Simmons College (1982) and master of fine arts degree in writing from Bennington College (2009)

Works: “Contents Under Pressure” (2016), “The Bowl with Gold Seams” (2016), “Known By Heart: Collected Stories” (2020), “Frieda’s Song” (2021) and “Vanishing Point” (2026)