“...Of course, Elizabeth Austen's poems are a pleasure to read—in her hands, the page is a marvelous place: the white wilderness where the various animals of the alphabet reveal themselves, their fine shapes, their clear and complex interrelations, and the range of epiphany their movements make possible. But it is the physical voice of the poet that reveals the invisible body of each word, the sonic body, the thing that actually touches the ear. The pleasure of Elizabeth's poems is, surely, in their thoughtfulness, in their deceptively quiet pursuit of food worthy of the head and heart, but these poems also exist as a type of music, as the song of one person speaking carefully to another. Inasmuch as the melody beneath a phrase of blues supports and magnifies what feels true to the singer, human speech with its rises and falls, pauses and precise inflections, also adds to our grasp of what's what to the poet. This is a truly engaging—perhaps enchanted—collection of poems, and the living fact of Elizabeth Austen's voice is good news for the world.” - Tim Seibles, author of Buffalo Head Solos
Elizabeth Austen is a Seattle-based poet, performer and teacher.
Through my early thirties, I worked as an actor, vocal coach and director with companies including Book-It Repertory Theatre, On the Boards and the Seattle Shakespeare Festival, as well as companies in Michigan, Montana, New Jersey and London, England. I trained as a classical actor and vocal coach at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and studied history, literature and philosophy at University College, London.
After six months’ solo travel in the Andes region of South America, I redirected my creative energies to writing poetry. Poet Alexandra Thurman describes my poems as offering "meditations, both discursive and lyrical, on the intersection between the political, the spiritual, and the sacraments of the everyday."
You'll find my poems in the anthologies Poets Against the War, Pontoon, Weathered Pages and in the Bellingham Review, Swivel, and the South African journal Carapace, among others. I've performed at Pacific Northwest venues including the Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Seattle Poetry Festival and the Skagit River Poetry Festival. I've received fellowships from Jack Straw Productions, Hedgebrook and the Vermont Studio Center, and my poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize.
Since 2001, I've produced literary programming for KUOW 94.9, one of Seattle’s NPR affiliates. Tune in to "The Beat" on Monday afternoons at 2 p.m. to hear commentaries on readings by local and national authors. You can also hear these segments via KUOW's Web site, www.kuow.org.
I earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles in 2001, and have taught for several years in the “Inquiry Through Writing” program at Richard Hugo House, a literary arts center in Seattle. I've been a visiting artist for the Anacortes, La Conner, Mount Vernon, Seattle and Sedro Woolley, Washington school districts, and for the Austin, Texas ArtSpark Festival. I've led workshops for Burning Word, Highline Community College, Poets in the Park, Puget Sound Writers Program and the Washington Center for the Book. I teach “Reading to Sustain Your Writing Life” privately in the Seattle area, and earn my living as a communications specialist at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.
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