Lucy Ellmann was born in Evanston, Illinois, on October 18, 1956. She is the daughter of renowned literary figures, Mary Ellman, a feminist literary critic, and Richard Ellman, a literary critic and biographer. When Lucy was 13, her family moved to England, where she would later pursue her education.
Ellmann's academic background includes studying at Falmouth School of Art, Essex University, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she earned a Foundation degree, BA, and MA, respectively. Her writing career took off with her autobiographical first novel, Sweet Desserts, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize. This early success was followed by two more novels, Varying Degrees of Hopelessness and Man or Mango?, both of which were shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her fourth novel, Dot in the Universe, was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Believer Book Award.
In addition to her work as a novelist, Ellmann is a prolific contributor to various publications, including Artforum, Modern Painters, the Guardian, the Listener, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement. She has also ventured into screenwriting and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 1992. Ellmann's diverse body of work and wide-ranging contributions to the arts establish her as a prominent and respected figure in the literary world.