Ellery Akers is the author of four books of poetry, including Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, which won BookAuthority’s Award for Best Environmentalism Books of All Time. Her book Practicing the Truth won the Autumn House Poetry Prize and an Independent Publisher Book Award. Her most recent collection, A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art, won the 2024 Blue Light Book Award. She is also the author of Knocking on the Earth, named a Best Book of the Year by the San Jose Mercury News, and Sarah’s Waterfall, a children’s novel. She is the recipient of fourteen writing awards, including the Poetry International Prize and Sierra magazine’s Nature Writing Award. Her poetry has been featured on National Public Radio and has appeared in The New York Times, American Poetry Review, and Poetry. An award-winning artist as well, Akers has exhibited in museums and galleries nationally, including the Anchorage Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. She lives on the Northern California coast and teaches private poetry workshops.
photo credit Stephanie Mohan