Seattle-based poet, performer and teacher Elizabeth Austen does not play it safe when it comes to her art. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet, forthcoming in the Toadlily Press quartet, Sightline. Her poems have appeared online, in journals and in the anthologies Poets Against the War, Weathered Pages, Pontoon and In the Telling. For the past 10 years, Austen has connected Puget Sound radio audiences to poetry through her literary programming for KUOW, 94.9, one of Seattle’s NPR affiliates, introducing recordings of Pacific Northwest literary events and interviewing local and national poets. Austen hit the road in 2007 when she served as the Washington “roadshow” poet, giving poetry readings and workshops in rural areas around the state. She teaches regularly throughout western Washington, has received grants from 4Culture and the City of Seattle, and is an alumna of Hedgebrook, Artsmith, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and Antioch University-Los Angeles (MFA in poetry, 2001). Austen makes her living as a communications specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where she also offers poetry and journaling workshops for the staff.
“Something magical is possible in a performance that doesn’t happen anywhere else—something electric, immediate, and entirely ephemeral…an exchange between performer and audience that is fluid and a little bit dangerous.”