Ellison has authored and co-authored seven books, including: "Loving Learning: How Progressive Education Can Save America's Schools," Square Peg: My Story and What it Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers, published by Hyperion Voice in March 2013; Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention, Hyperion Voice, 2010, The Mommy Brain: How motherhood makes us smarter (2005),[1] The New Economy of Nature: The quest to make conservation profitable, Imelda: Steel butterfly of the Philippines.
[3] Ellison's writings have been published in publications such as Working Mother, ConservationMagazine.org,[4] Fortune,[5] Monthly Magazine, and Conservation in Practice.
[citation needed] She writes a monthly column for Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment and is a member of the North 24th Writers.
[citation needed] Working for the San Jose Mercury News in 1985, Ellison along with Lewis M. Simmons and Pete Carey wrote about how Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos had looted the Philippines treasury and clandestinely purchased properties in the United States.
They were jointly awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, citing "their June 1985 series that documented massive transfers of wealth abroad by President Marcos and his associates and had a direct impact on subsequent political developments in the Philippines and the United States.