Elana Bell
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Elana Bell is a poet, sound practitioner, and creative guide. She is the author of Mother Country (BOA Editions 2020), poems about motherhood, fertility, and mental illness. Her debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and brings her complex heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elana is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her writing has appeared in AGNI, Harvard Review, and the Massachusetts Review, among others. She was an inaugural finalist for the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, an award that recognizes and honors a poet who is doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. Elana facilitates artistic rituals and processes that support people in accessing their authentic voice through sound and writing. In addition to leading her own embodied Creative Fire workshops, Elana teaches poetry to actors at the Juilliard School and sings with the Resistance Revival Chorus, a group of women activists and musicians committed to bringing joy and song to the resistance movement. She is also the founder of the Mother Artist Salon.
Published Works
Mother Country (BOA Editions 2020)
Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
Video Reading
Current Title
Education
BA Literature/Theater Sarah Lawrence College
MFA Poetry Sarah Lawrence College