Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Elana Bell

Born in Venice Beach, California, Elana Bell received a bachelor of arts from Sarah Lawrence College in 1999. She returned to Sarah Lawrence for graduate study and received an MFA in Creative Writing in 2008.

Her manuscript, Eyes, Stones, was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award, and will be published by Louisiana State University Press in 2012.

She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Drisha Institute.

Bell has conducted poetry workshops for educators, women in prison, teenagers across the country and abroad, as well as for the Arab Jewish Peace Organization.

She currently serves as the writer-in-residence for the Bronx Academy of Letters and resides in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, writer Jai Chakrabarti.