Short Bio

E.B. Bartels is a nonfiction writer, a teacher, an editor, and a former bookseller with an MFA from Columbia. She is the author of Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter (out in paperback from Mariner Books/HarperCollins on 11/11/25), a narrative nonfiction book about loving and losing animals, which has received positive press from many media outlets including The Associated Press, NPR, The Boston Globe, WBUR, Kinship, Psychology Today, and the American Kennel Club, and which has been translated into Korean. Her essays and interviews have appeared in Salon, Slate, WBUR, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Believer, and The Rumpus, among others. E.B. lives in Massachusetts with her human and reptile family members.

Long Bio

E.B. Bartels is a nonfiction writer, a teacher, an editor, and a former Newtonville Books bookseller, with a BA in Russian from Wellesley College and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University.

Her work has appeared in Salon, Slate, WBUR, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Believer, The Rumpus,  The Millions, The Toast, The Butter, and the anthology The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35, among others. For nine years on the now-defunct Fiction Advocate, she wrote the monthly columns Non-Fiction by Non-Men, in which she interviewed women, trans, and non-binary people who write nonfiction, and Non-Fiction about Non-Humans, in which she interviewed people who write nonfiction about animals.

Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, E.B.’s debut narrative nonfiction book about the world of loving and losing animals, exploring the singular nature of our bonds with our companion animals, and how best to grieve for them once they’ve passed away, was published in hardcover by Mariner Books (an imprint of HarperCollins) on August 2, 2022, and it will be released in paperback on November 11, 2025. Good Grief has received positive press from many media outlets including The Associated Press, NPR, The Boston Globe, WBUR, Kinship, Psychology Today, and the American Kennel Club. (Click here for a complete list of media coverage.) Good Grief has also been translated into Korean and published by Wisdom House.

In addition to writing, E.B. also works as a freelance editor, a manuscript consultant, a writing coach, a tutor, and a senior editorial writer in the communications and public affairs department at Wellesley College. She lives outside Boston with her husband (Richie), her son (Luca), and a pair of red-footed tortoises (Terrence and Twyla).