"Ellis put his love of reading to good use in creating his literary debut, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?: Adventures in Boyhood, now out in paperback. Part- memoir, part- essay collection, Ellis recounts his experience growing up with an imaginary friend, Mikey, who helped him navigate a childhood in which his family often relocated due to his father's work in the military."
"I was in a place where I didn't know a lot of kids, and so the thing to fill my time was reading. If it was a crazy hot day in Sacramento, California, or Youngstown, Ohio, or Tampa, Florida, I could just sit and read all day long, as long as I was quiet and didn't bother nobody. So I started to fall in love with just disappearing in these stories and these characters and these people in these worlds."
Jay Ellis reads before bed to let frustrations and daily demands melt away and to be fully present with stories and characters. He turned a lifelong love of reading into a literary debut, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?: Adventures in Boyhood, a hybrid memoir and essay collection. The book recounts growing up with an imaginary friend, Mikey, who helped him navigate frequent relocations caused by his father's military career. Ellis spent summers with grandparents, moving between Sacramento, Youngstown, and Tampa, and relied on reading as an accessible, quiet form of escape and companionship.
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