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 co-founded the monthly poetry reading series, Poetry Night at Sitwell’s (see Events & Home pages for more details).

Ellen Austin-Li’s first full-length collection, Incidental Pollen—a 2023 Trio Award finalist, 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series semi-finalist, and runner-up to the 2023 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize—is available from Madville Publishing and other bookstores. Finishing Line Press published her two chapbooks, Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). SAFTA (Sundress Academy for the Arts) supported her work with an artist’s residency in 2024. Her poetry appears in Artemis,One Art, Thimble Literary, The Maine Review, Salamander, Lily Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, and many other places. She’s a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee and holds an MFA in poetry from the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen co-founded the monthly reading series, Poetry at Artifact (formerly Poetry Night at Sitwell’s), in Cincinnati, where she lives.