Elizabeth Austen is a Seattle-based poet, performer and teacher. She served as the Washington State poet laureate for 2014-16, and as KUOW public radio’s poetry commentator for nearly 20 years.

• Watch Elizabeth performing at Town Hall Seattle.
• Watch this short video profile on ArtZone (segment begins at 1:50).

She spent her teens and twenties working in the theatre and writing poems. A six-month solo walkabout in the Andes region of South America led her to focus exclusively on poetry. She is the author of Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2011) and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet, part of the 2010 Toadlily Press quartet, Sightline.

Her poems have appeared online ( The Writer’s Almanac,  Verse Daily), and in journals including Willow Springs, Bellingham Review, the Los Angeles Review, the Seattle Review, DMQ Review, and anthologies including Poets Against the War, Weathered Pages and In the Telling.