Elee Kraljii Gardiner is an author, editor, and creative mentor whose award-winning books of poetry include Trauma Head and serpentine loop, and the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and three chapbooks: Residence, WATCHER with Gary Barwin, and Trauma Head: the medical file. A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. Originally from Boston, she lives in Canada where she directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors. eleekg.com
Background
Elee holds a BA in Humanistic Studies from McGill University, an MA in Hispanic Literature from University of British Columbia, an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio in creative non fiction and wrote her first poem at age 38 while a poetry adjunct in the program in 2007.
In 2008 she founded Thursdays Writing Collective, a beloved non-profit, low-barrier organization in a contested urban neighbourhood of Vancouver that changed the literary landscape. Through its ten years of activity she edited and published the Collective’s nine anthologies through Otter Press, a micro press dedicated to amplifying voices and content that otherwise might not be published. In 2012 she published her first book, V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press) coedited with John Asfour. The book foregrounds the voices of present and former residents of the neighbourhood, some who have never appeared in print and others who are internationally recognized for their writing. V6A was shortlisted for the 2012 City of Vancouver Book Award and included in university courses.
Her first book of poems, serpentine loop (Anvil Press, 2016), considers gender and physicality through the idea of ice and was nominated for the 2017 Raymond Souster Award. Her second book, the long poem memoir Trauma Head (Anvil Press, 2018), won the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, was shortlisted for the Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and nominated for the Souster Award. It concerns the body as well, but from the medical experience of vertebral artery dissection and stroke. A chapbook of the same name (Trauma Head, Otter Press), bound as a medical file, was a finalist for the 2018 bpNichol Chapbook Award.
In 2019, while an MFA student at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she published Against Death: 35 Essays on Living (Anvil Press), which was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal and Hoffer Grand Prize in the US.
Her chapbook, RESIDENCE (Otter Press, 2022) records the first of two artistic residency experiences at the Medical Museion in Copenhagen in 2022-2023. Another chapbook, WATCHER, visual poems co-authored with Gary Barwin, was published by Timglaset Editions in Malmö, Sweden, 2022. It will be part of a visual arts exhibit at Massy Arts Society in Vancouver in fall 2024.
Elee is a frequent collaborator with writers, choreographers, visual artists, and musicians and is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time.
Her visual work appears in publications including Streetcake, Osmosis and To Call and her writing is published in places including Hunger Mountain, Poetry Northwest, TCR, Event, PRISM International, CV2. Her poem “Doppelgänger” was the first poem published in Harvard Medicine Journal in more than 40 years. She is a contributor to several anthologies such as ForceField (Mother Tongue), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press), Enpipe Line (Creekstone), Alive at the Centre (Ooligan Press), Sustenance (Anvil Press), Gush (Frontenac), Ghost Fishing (Split This Rock) and Sweetwater: Poems for the Watershed (Caitlin Press). Elee’s essay “On Immigration” received Best of the Net 2017 from All Lit Up. Individual poems have been translated into French, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.
Central to her practice is community work: Elee sits on the advisory Board of the Andover Bread Loaf Program, which promotes literacy and educational revitalization through the lens of social justice in the most under-resourced communities and school systems around the world, particularly in US urban communities and public schools. She founded and co-directs The Whole Cloth reading series with Dr. Bronwen Tate, at Green College at University of British Columbia and previously ran the Thunderbird Pop-Up, Postal Code, and Cross Border Pollination reading series.
She is a recipient of the Lina Chartrand Award for Social Justice and the Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentor Award. For many years she was on the editorial board of Poetry is Dead and the Advisory Council of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, where she now lectures. She is a founding member of CWILA (Canadian Women in Literary Arts) and a two-time member of their Critic in Residence jury. She was a Poetry Ambassador for Vancouver Poet Laureate Rachel Rose and has been on several prize juries for The League of Canadian Poets, City of Vancouver Book Award, Surrey Muse, Newlove Poetry Award, and Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize.
Elee is a manuscript assessor for presses and conducts interviews and reviews for several publications. She is a popular guest lecturer and workshop facilitator in highschools including Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu (Finland), Concord Academy and Phillips Academy Andover (US), St Johns School and York House (Canada). She also has guest lectured at Tufts University, Ontario College of Art and Design, University of British Columbia, and Simon Fraser University. She directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors, and is a co-founder, with Rachel Rose, of the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award.
High-Res Photos
Here are high res photos for events or posters. All photo credits Sophia Hsin. Click for full size.
