Ellen Austin-Li was born and raised in Syracuse, New York. She received her BS in Nursing at Boston College in 1980, then lived and worked in Boston as a pediatric critical care nurse for eighteen years. She moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband, where they started a family. After raising her two sons, Ellen decided to take a class at Women Writing for a Change. There she discovered her passion for words.

Ellen is a current member of The Greater Cincinnati Writers League https://cincinnatiwritersleague.org/ and The Cincinnati Writers Project http://cincinnatiwriters.com/. She’s active in many local and regional workshops. She also curates the monthly poetry reading series, Poetry at Artifact (formerly Poetry Night at Sitwell’s). See Events & Home pages for more details.

Ellen Austin-Li’s 2025 debut collection, Incidental Pollen—a Trio Award finalist and Wisconsin Poetry Series semi-finalist—is the runner-up to Madville Publishing’s Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. Finishing Line Press published her chapbooks Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). Ellen is a recipient of a 2026 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) has supported her work with a 2024 writing residency. Ellen is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net-nominated poet whose work appears in many places, including SWIMM, Salamander, The Maine Review, Sheila-na-Gig, Lily Poetry Review, and One Art. Ellen holds an MFA in Poetry from the Solstice Program. She curates the monthly reading series Poetry at Artifact in Cincinnati, where she lives.