About - Roots & Branches

Hello! I’m glad you found your way here, where I write essays from an adopted person’s perspective, often touching on identity, heritage, memory, and belonging.
Roots & Branches has sprouted a few offshoots and diversified its newsletter sections.

In early 2025, I began to dip into the Fiction universe, having been a writer of non-fiction, personal essays, and memoirs. For my first long project, I adopted a pen name, Islay Corwin.
I invite you to explore:

Behind the Hedge lies the Silverton Estate:
Essays on Adoption themes drawn from the duology.
Archives of the illustrated serialized version of Book 1.
The Garden and the Gate
Wander further into this new section for essays on the botanical traditions in the novellas, the story’s perennial and herb gardens, the shape and design of the Medieval-style garden and apothecary, lore and symbolism, the ancient Welsh healers, and random glimpses into Celtic mythology by a seeker with a bardic soul.
Seasons
Gathering and creating image poetry inspired by Japanese haiga, shahai, haiku, haibun, prose poems, and vignettes about gardens, nature, memory, seeing, nostalgia, and impermanence.

I hope you’ll enjoy what you find here!

The Duology is widely available in e-book:
Through the Yew Hedge
Through the Iron Gate
Amazon

About Islay Corwin

Islay writes lyrical fiction that honors the complexity of adoption and identity formation through the magic and myth of both the worlds we inherit and the worlds we choose. Her debut novella, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic, draws from her experience as an adoptee, weaving botanical knowledge with fae mythology to explore the search for wholeness. Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records deepens the world of Silverton Estate in a gentle, gothic academia tone.

(pen name of Mary Ellen Gambutti)

Join me on this journey between myth and memory. I am also the author of Permanent Home: A Memory Collection, Stroke Story, Fortitude’s Footing, Neither Here Nor There: A Memoir in Essays, and I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls. Available widely in ebook format.
Thanks for supporting indie authors.
Mary Ellen

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Essays, memoirs in adoption themes of identity, belonging, and permanence. I write fiction as Islay Corwin, author of The Silverton Estate duology. Follow Behind the Hedge and The Garden and the Gate. In Seasons: image poems, vignettes, and nostalgia.