Shelly Ellis is the penname of women's fiction/romance author and creator of the Gibbons Gold Digger series. Her fiction writing career began when she became one of four finalists in the BET Books First-Time Writers Contest when she was 19 years old. The prize was having her first short-story romance published in the book, All That and Then Some!

Her first novel, The Right Maneuver, debuted in April 2011. She has since published several novels and short stories under different pen names. She has been nominated for African American Literary Award, RT Reviewer's Choice award in Multicultural Romance, was named one of iBooks Rising Stars in Romance in 2015, and received a 46th annual NAACP Image award nomination for the third book in the Gibbons Gold Digger series, Another Woman's Man.

She is married and lives in Prince George's County, Maryland with her husband and their daughter. She loves to paint, read, and watch movies.