Headshot of Ellen Elder.

Ellen Elder (she/her) is a poet born in New York City and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is poetry coeditor at Literary Mama, and her poetry and reviews have appeared in About Place Journal, Banshee, Tampa Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Elder writes about motherhood, grief, and the manner in which exile, trauma, loss, and nostalgia are influenced by and influence transnational experience and expression. She studied creative writing at the University of Chicago (BA), Miami University (MA), and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (PhD). 

Elder spent childhood summers in Ireland, where her family ran a country inn. She taught at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and lived for nine years in Germany before relocating to Charleston, South Carolina, where she teaches in public schools.