"Away with Words", Lew-Ellyn's newspaper column, is an eight-time winner in the Maine Press Association's Better Newspaper Contest.
She currently writes for Maine Seniors Magazine, Maine Womens Magazine and The Moosehead Lakeshore Journal.
As a storyteller, Hughes writes about love, parenting, grand-parenting, aging, and family (not only being why you are, but why you are the way you are).
Lew-Ellyn's love of words and love of history along with her ability to pick out a single fleck of gold from the vast river of moments that flow through a day, she creates humorous, often poignant or insightful stories about Maine and its people.
Hughes' Maine ancestry dates to the Revolutionary War era, but because her father's military career took her family to everywhere but the state they loved the most, she spent only summers in Maine, on Moosehead Lake. Because of this, many of Hughes' tales give a unique view of a Mainer living in exile--like how to deal with finding a South Carolina cockroach in your LL Bean boot (while your foot is still in it!)
Her stories have appeared in several newspapers across Maine, including Maine Sportsmen Magazine, Down East Magazine, Maine Women's Magazine and Maine Seniors Magazine.