About Bella
DR. BELLA ELLWOOD-CLAYTON was born on Valentine’s Day in Melbourne, Australia; the daughter of avant-garde composer and playwright, Syd Clayton, and enlightenment-seeker, Gwenda Ellwood.
At a young age, Bella moved to Vancouver, Canada, with her mother. They lived in Kits (Kitsilano) in different basement suites. Bella’s mother went back to school, studying IT. Bella had a chaotic childhood with lots of freedom. She loved dancing and being with her friends.
In elementary school, Bella had a bad knee accident and on the way to the hospital, wrote her first poem—a topic fitting a Vancouverite.
Raindrops on the window meet like lovers after a long separation
During her recovery in the hospital, a friend’s mother visited Bella and read aloud Dylan Thomas’ poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” as well as gifting her a book of poetry. From that moment on, Bella never stopped writing. She always had a journal and found deeper companionship with the page than almost anything or anyone else.
After high school, Bella moved to Montréal and completed a Bachelor of Arts from Concordia University, majoring in anthropology. Her honours thesis examined beauty historically and cross-culturally. She received first class honours and was the recipient of the Mark Doughty Scholarship. She had a studio apartment in the McGill Ghetto, a long-distance (toxic) relationship, and a desire explore the world.
Her first short story was published, as well as some poetry.
Soon after, with a crew from National Geographic, Bella took to the jungle to explore tattoo and social change in the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia. This documentary continues to air from a wide range of international locations.
Offered a full Ph.D. scholarship, Bella conducted an ethnography in the central Philippines about young women's sexual and reproductive health. (Luckily for her, she had a Filipino boyfriend who helped her understand the nuances of courtship.) As the Philippines is the texting capital of the world, her research followed suit. Bella became regarded as an international expert in how mobile phones are used to navigate intimate relationships, speaking about love and technology at conferences in Asia, Europe, America, and Australia, teaching undergraduate classes about mobile telephony in Korea, and publishing her work in several prestigious academic anthologies.
Throughout her postgraduate degree, Bella was the recipient of numerous grants, scholarships, and traveling bursaries. She completed her Ph.D. thesis from The Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, WHO Collaborating Centre, The University of Melbourne.
But, academia felt too stifling. She wanted to take her knowledge about sexuality to the mainstream. More Carrie Bradshaw than Margaret Mead.
Bella returned to Australia to write a weekly sex and relationship column for the newspaper mX - published in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. She became a columnist for Sunday Life Magazine, which appears in the Melbourne Age and Sydney Sun-Herald.
Her life was about to change. She met an Adelaide-born, management consultant at a bar in Fitzroy. They had an intense conversation and exchanged numbers. She told her friends the next morning, “I’ve met the man I’m going to marry,” and thirteen months later, wearing her grandmother’s wartime wedding dress, said, “I do.”
Her nonfiction book, Sex Drive: In Pursuit of Female Desire, was published by Allen & Unwin. She published more short stories and poetry and wrote for The Huffington Post and Daily Life, and frequently appeared on radio programs such as Triple M and TV programs including, The Project and Sunrise. She’s given many talks about relationships, including a TEDx talk.
Bella hosts The Science of Sex Drive on Love Destination, a global video-on-demand network on 8 million devices.
Over the last decade, Bella has turned her attention to fiction. She currently works in Editorial at NAC (New Authors Collective) literary agency and has a freelance editing business, Dr. Bella Editorial. She was the resident creative writing teacher at Kensington Neighbourhood House.
After writing her first poem about raindrops all those years ago, her debut novel, WEEKEND FRIENDS, was published in November 2023 (Post Hill Press/Simon & Schuster).
Married to a real-life superhero, she lives in Melbourne and has two spirited—eek—teens and a mini Maltese who truly believes he’s a pit bull. When she’s not on her laptop, you can find her doing numerous activities, such as downward dogging, pleading with her teens to go outside, randomly blurting out, “Oh, that sounds like a good story idea,” and consuming too many vegetarian dumplings.
