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Within the soundstage of a Brooklyn television studio on E 14th St., a young girl believes her acting career is all bright lights and playing dress up, but her messy reality is in stark juxtaposition to the glittering world of the tv cameras. Capshaw takes an unflinching look at growing up inside the three walls where life begins, ends, and lingers for the cameras, while real life with all its troubles keeps on going.
Confronted with the challenges of fitting in, defining identity, and enduring the tragic loss of her real life father, Three Walled World unravels the ghosts that remain—those around us and the ones within.
"This is a moving, intimate debut that surprised me, challenged me, and lingered well beyond the final page. Three Walled World is a book you don’t rush through—even when you can’t put it down." —Alan Locher, The Locher Room
"Subdued yet incisive, Three Walled World reveals the complex interior of a girl growing up in the glow of the studio lights, navigating grief, visibility, and self-invention. Capshaw writes with a tenderness sharpened by truth." —Stephanie Valente, author of Internet Girlfriend
"In Three Walled World, Ellery Capshaw takes us behind the scenes of her childhood, where she has the gift to 'chameleon into any name, any experience that lived between lines.' This tender, haunting memoir defies genre, and transports us to childhood bedrooms, daybreak car rides, inedible feasts, and the bottom of an empty bottle, perfecting her performance while we watch her discover that there's no script for the grief we feel right alongside her." —Lisa Mangini author of Ambivalent Nymph
"Ellery Capshaw’s Three Walled World is a memoir-in verse that confronts grief head-on. It is an elegy for a lost father and lost childhood. Retracing Capshaw’s own experience of being a child actor on a long-running Soap, the book’s personal narrative opens unto philosophical questions. One of the most enduring is what happens to the real self when we wear a mask too long. Also confronting addiction, Capshaw yet refuses to sound only loss. The story’s arc becomes one of recovery and rebirth. With its piercingly honest voice, Capshaw’s debut will stay with you, long after you close the book." —Shara McCallum, author of Madwoman and Behold
Ellery Capshaw, a Connecticut native with an MFA in Creative Writing, writes poetry that shifts between grief and beauty, light and shadow. Three Walled World is her debut collection and her work as been published both online and in print. Her work digs into the messy, magical corners of life—capturing the heartbreak that makes us human. Outside of writing, she loves to explore near and far, always finding a metaphor along the way. Follow along on her Instagram @ell_caps.