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, where she received the Martin B. Bernstein Fellowship in Poetry. She curates the monthly reading series Poetry at Artifact in Cincinnati, where she lives.