Ella Ray is a writer, editor, and full-spectrum doula based in Portland, Oregon. Through independent publishing, community librarianship, and accessible scholarship, Ray’s work seeks to carve out space for everyday people to cultivate literacy and engage in meaningful cultural criticism. This multi-passionate practice is indebted to a cosmology of black, disabled cultural workers.

In 2026, Ella Ray launched Marginalia. Using accessible educational ephemera and in-person literacy programming, Marginalia destigmatizes and prioritizes (re)learning in an era defined by dangerous anti-intellectualism. From 2023–2026, Ray was the Associate Editor of Variable West. They aided the development of an editorial program that embraced substantive and accessible arts criticism by non-traditional writers.