NEWS:
- “Mud Lake” won the 2011 Poetry International Prize
- “The Word That Is a Prayer” featured on American Life in Poetry, column 312
- Sarah’s Waterfall is a 2010 Mom's Choice Award book, a 2010 NAPPA Award book, and a 2009 Honor Award book from Skipping Stones magazine
About Ellery Akers
Ellery Akers is an award-winning writer and artist living on the coast of Northern California. She received a B.A. from Harvard and an M.A. from San Francisco State University.
Her collection of poems, Knocking on the Earth, from Wesleyan University Press (1989) was named one of the year's best books by the San Jose Mercury News. She is also the author of a children's novel, Sarah's Waterfall: A Healing Story About Sexual Abuse (2009). Akers has won ten national writing awards, including the John Masefield Award, the Paumanok Award, and Sierra magazine's Nature Writing Award. Her poetry has been featured on National Public Radio and has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Orion, Harvard, The Sun, and many other magazines. Her nature essays have been published in numerous anthologies, including Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals (Ballantine). Her play, Letters to Anna, 1846-54, won a Dominican University One Act Play Festival Award in 2003.
Among her honors are fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, the MacDowell Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and a grant from the Marin Arts Council.
She has taught at private workshops and at Cabrillo College, and has been on the faculty of writing conferences at Squaw Valley, Humboldt State University, Foothill College, and Skyline College.
An award-winning visual artist as well, Akers has exhibited her artwork in galleries and museums nationally, including the Anchorage Museum of History and Art and the Muscarelle Museum of Art.