words & things beheld
elinor ann walker
cover image: ©serkan turk || all other images unless otherwise noted: ©elinor ann walker
About
Elinor Ann Walker (she/her/hers) is a poet, writer, and editor who holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is the author of Fugitive but Gorgeous, selected as the winner of the 2024 Sheila-Na-Gig First Chap Contest (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, forthcoming 2025) and Give Sorrow (Whittle Micro-Press, forthcoming 2026). An Outstanding Faculty awardee and former adjunct professor at University of Maryland Global Campus, she works on the poetry staff of River Heron Review.
Her creative publications include poems, prose poems, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her writing has been nominated for Best American Essays, Best American Food Writing, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize (Best of the Small Presses).
She's an amateur photographer, haphazard gardener, and mercurial star-gazer. Birds, rocks, fossils, music, etymologies, flowers, planets, shipwrecks, caves, trees, and pollinators fascinate her. She believes in the butterfly effect, is the mother of two young adult sons, does her best writing outside, and lives in the Appalachian foothills with her husband, two cats, and a dog. Her full length poetry manuscript and another chapbook are now under consideration at various presses.
award nominations & other news
Delighted to announce that Give Sorrow, my hybrid chapbook of centos, has been accepted for publication by Whittle Micro-Press!
Exciting news! Semifinalist for both the 2024 Cutbank and Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contests, my manuscript Fugitive but Gorgeous has won Sheila-Na-Gig‘s 2024 First Chap Contest and will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2025!
Meuse, my first full-length poetry manuscript, is now a four-time finalist and two-time semifinalist for publication.
- Semifinalist: 2024 Sowell Emerging Writers Prize by Terrain.org, Texas Tech University Press, and the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World
- Semifinalist: 2023 Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize by The Journal and Ohio State University Press (Mad Creek Books)
- Finalist: 2024 reading period, June Road Press
- Finalist: 2023 Akron Poetry Prize
- Finalist: 2023 open reading period for Glass Lyre Press
- Finalist: 2023 open reading period for Trail to Table Press, an imprint of Wandering Aengus (shorter version, different title)
Other News:
- Still Life is Movable, a micro-chapbook, named a finalist for Harbor Review‘s 2024 Washburn Prize
- “I will hunger,” nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology by Mom Egg Review (MER) Online Quarterly
- Longlisted for the Westword Flash Fiction Prize
- Longlisted for Frontier Poetry‘s 2024 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize
- “Fugitive but Gorgeous,” nominated for Best Small Fictions 2024 by MacQueen’s Quinterly
- “Highway 64, Tennessee,” nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2024) by The Orchards Poetry Journal
- Excavations, a micro-chapbook, named a semifinalist for Harbor Review‘s 2023 Washburn Prize
- “Meuse,” originally published in The Southern Review, featured on Verse Daily
- “Cornbread, Cast Iron Skillets, and Confessions,” nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and Best American Food Writing (2023) by Ruby
- “Bodies of Water,” nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2023) by Pidgeonholes
- “Summer Dresses,” nominated for Best Small Fictions 2023 by Pidgeonholes
- “Night, South Alabama, No Regrets,” nominated for Best of the Net 2021 and Best Microfiction 2020 by Whale Road Review
creative publications
2024-2025
“Sally Mann’s Night-Blooming Cereus.” Bayou Magazine, forthcoming.
“After the Anniversary Party for the Feathery Woman & Blindfolded Man.” Orca, forthcoming.
“Through a Quantum Flute.” Orca, forthcoming.
“You Only Ghosted Me in Your Head.” Orca, forthcoming.
“a cave echo: a prophet: a cento.” Pirene’s Fountain, forthcoming.
“Stay Tender.” Pirene’s Fountain, forthcoming.
“Pantoum Composed of Lines After Paintings of Girls.” AGNI 100 (2024).
“Migration.” Thimble Literary Magazine 7.2 (Fall 2024).
“Clutch.” SWING 1.2 (Spring, 2024).
“Crown Shyness.” SWING 1.2 (Spring, 2024).
“Imagine a Wing.” Nimrod International Journal 67.2 (Spring/Summer 2024).
“Refuge Sounds.” Nimrod International Journal 67.2 (Spring/Summer 2024).
“Thresholds.” The Vassar Review (Design and Devotion, 2024).
“Haunted by Sistema Sac Actun.” West Trade Review 15 (Spring 2024).
“A Singing Bowl.” San Pedro River Review 16.1 (Spring 2024).
“Ode to the Broken.” Shō Poetry Journal 4 (Winter 2024).
2020-2023
“Ambiguous Undulations.” Poet Lore 118.1/2 (Summer/Fall 2023)
“Lioness.” Gyroscope Review (Crone Power Issue, Fall 2023).
“Geminids, Field Report.” Naugatuck River Review (Summer/Fall 2023).
“Memento Mori.” The Orchards Poetry Journal (Summer 2023).
“Highway 64, Tennessee.” The Orchards Poetry Journal (Summer 2023).
“Key Words.” The Southern Review (Spring 2023).
“Meuse.” The Southern Review (Spring 2023).
“Strange Beds for Bones.” Cherry Tree 9 (2023).
“Last Year’s Tree.” Black Bough Poetry (Christmas and Winter, 3, 2022).
“Disappearing.” FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art 14 (2022).
“Sestina (A Ghost Story).” Northwest Review 51.03 (Spring 2022).
“In Praise of Garlic.” The Orchards Poetry Journal (Winter 2021).
“The Same Bare Place.” The Orchards Poetry Journal (Winter 2021).
“Advent Calendar.” Black Bough Poetry (Christmas/Winter, 2, 2021).
“For Emma, Wherever We May Find Her.” Nimrod International Journal 64.2 (Spring/Summer 2021).
“Kaze No Denwa.” Nimrod International Journal 64.2 (Spring/Summer 2021).
“Stings.” Better Than Starbucks 5.5 (September 2020).
“Ruby Throat.” First Things (May 2020).
“Breakfield Road.” First Things (January 2020).
previously published in print, pre-digitally
“Trafalgar Square.” Cicada 8.1 (2005).
“Things Turn Up Dead in September.” Rosebud 25 (2002). [runner-up, 2002 William Stafford Prize for Poetry]
“Grandfather’s Baskets.” The Christian Science Monitor 94.193 (28 August 2002).
“The Barn.” Poet Lore 85.2 (1990).
“Tenth Birthday.” Poet Lore 85.2 (1990).
“Street Musician.” Parnassus Literary Journal 14.2 (1990).
|| anthologies
“Disappearing.” Facing Goodbye. Edited by Jane Hanson and Mirjam Mahler. The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, 2024.
“Fugue State,” “Object Impermanence.” Fantastic Imaginary Creatures: An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems. Edited by Gerry LaFemina. Madville Publishing, 2024.
“In Praise of Garlic.” Savor: Poems for the Tongue. Edited by Brennan Breeland and Stan Galloway. Friendly City Books, 2024.
“Dizzy.” Dark Confessions. Edited by Matthew M. C. Smith, Kari Flickinger, Ranjabali Chaudhuri, Ness Owen. Black Bough Poetry, 2021.
“Ask for the Old Paths.” Mizmor Anthology, 2020 Poetry Edition. Poetica Publishing, 2020.
“Baby Teeth,” “My Father Said.” Shut Down Strangers and Hot Rod Angels. Edited by Jessie Lynn McMains. Bone & Ink Press, 2019.
“Stories.” Flash Glass Anthology, IV. Glassboro, N. J.: Glassworks, 2018.
“Untitled.” Stone Renga. Edited by Tom Murphy and Alan Berecka. Village Brooks Press, 2017.
|| online
2024-2025
“How Lost Words Haunt Like Wings Behind Glass.” Little Free Lit Mag, forthcoming, fall 2025.
“After the Anniversary Party for the Feathery Woman & Blindfolded Man.” Orca, forthcoming.
“Through a Quantum Flute.” Orca, forthcoming.
“You Only Ghosted Me in Your Head.” Orca, forthcoming.
“Cardinal Phonetics.” Little Free Lit Mag, forthcoming.
“Cistern.” Sweet: A Literary Confection, forthcoming, 2025.
“Mapping.” Bear Review, forthcoming.
“Self-Portrait as Triptych.” Bear Review, forthcoming.
“For Second Sight.” Emerge Literary Journal, forthcoming.
“Telltales.” Emerge Literary Journal, forthcoming.
“Where I Find Myself.” Emerge Literary Journal, forthcoming.
“My Mother Kept Saying Azaleas.” River Heron Review 8.1 (2025).
“Carolina Thistle.” Plant-Human Quarterly 15 (2024).
“Creeping Moss.” Plant-Human Quarterly 15 (2024).
“Migration.” Thimble Literary Magazine 7.2 (Fall 2024).
“Compensatory Curves.” Terrain.org (9 August 2024).
“Reading Cicada Wings.” Terrain.org (9 August 2024).
“A Wake is a Disturbance.” Terrain.org (9 August 2024).
“Where caves.” Terrain.org (9 August 2024).
2022-2023
“Holdfast the Beautiful Changes.” The Penn Review 73 (Winter 2023).
“Honey.” West Trade Review 14 (Winter 2023).
“Deepening the Drift.” SWWIM Every Day (30 November 2023)
“Nautilus: An Ode.” Plume 146 (October 2023).
“After Cave Acoustics & Chimeras.” The Shore 19 (2023).
“I will hunger.” Mom Egg Review (MER) Online Quarterly (September 2023).
“Fugitive but Gorgeous.” MacQueen’s Quinterly 19 (15 August 2023).
“Polymorphous Pigeon in the Art Museum.” MacQueen’s Quinterly 19 (15 August 2023).
“Baby Teeth.” [republished] Fevers of the Mind (22 June 2023).
“Meuse.” [republished] Verse Daily (07 June 2023).
“Wild Violets.” Susurrus 6 (Spring 2023).
“Song for Cello & Girlhood.” Jet Fuel Review 25 (Spring 2023).
“Fugue State.” Jet Fuel Review 25 (Spring 2023).
“For the Piano in a Snowy Field Surrounded by Trees.” Bracken X (2023).
“A Cento of Serene Length.” Bracken X (2023).
“Hard Mast.” Bracken X (2023).
“Punctuation.” Whale Road Review 29 (Winter 2022).
“Object Impermanence.” Hayden’s Ferry Review (“Tiny Architectures,” 2022).
“Cornbread, Cast Iron Skillets, and Confessions.” Ruby 2 (Fall/Winter 2022).
“Disappearing.” FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art 14 (2022).
“Bodies of Water.” Pidgeonholes (September 2022).
“Summer Dresses.” Pidgeonholes (September 2022).
“This Fishing in the Air.” Gone Lawn 46 (2022).
“Undomesticated Ghosts.” Gone Lawn 46 (2022).
“August.” Willawaw Journal (Fall 2022).
“Summer Communion.” Willawaw Journal (Fall 2022).
“I want my eye to look like the world.” Wordpeace (Summer/Fall 2022).
“Nothing is Ordinary During Wartime.” Wordpeace (Summer/Fall 2022).
online || 2020-2021
“Moonflower’s Ghost.” Plant-Human Quarterly 3 (2021).
“Sediment.” The Rappahannock Review 9.1 (2021).
“Homes at Night.” Juniper – A Poetry Journal 5.2 (Fall 2021).
“Night, South Alabama, No Regrets.” Whale Road Review 21 (Winter 2020).
“Orionids, Field Report.” Rat’s Ass Review (Winter 2020).
“Still Life.” The Ekphrastic Review (October 2020).
“Don’t let me forget to tell you.” Shot Glass Journal 32 (September 2020).
“Stings.” [republished] Better Than Starbucks (September 2020).
“Saguaro.” Tiny Seed Literary Journal (25 August 2020).
“Driving Rain.” perhappened mag (7 July 2020).
“Synchronicity.” The New Verse News (6 July 2020).
“Birthright.” Mezzo Cammin 15.1 (June 2020).
“Stings.” Mezzo Cammin 15.1 (June 2020).
“Ruby Throat.” First Things (1 May, 2020).
“Breakfield Road.” First Things (1 January 2020).
|| previous online publications
“Stories.” Glassworks (1 September, 2018).
“On Hoping There’s More Than Meets the Eye.” Halfway Down the Stairs (1 June 2018).
“What Could Make Them Glad?” Halfway Down the Stairs (1 June 2018).
“Meg Tries to Explain.” NonBinary Review: The Zoetic Press Journal of Literature 17 (2018).
“38 Weeks.” Mezzo Cammin 6.1 (June 2011).
“Bluff.” Mezzo Cammin 6.1 (June 2011).
“Grass Widow and Other Metaphors.” Soundzine 13 (2011).
unless otherwise noted, all images © elinor ann walker
Poem on my Mind
W. S. Merwin