Ellery Akers's newest book, A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art, won the 2024 Blue Light Book Award. Among her previous collections of poetry are Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance (2020), which won BookAuthority's Award for the Best Environmentalism Books of All Time; Practicing the Truth (2015), which won the Autumn House Poetry Prize, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and the San Francisco Book Festival Poetry Award; and Knocking on the Earth (1989), named a Best Book of the Year by the San Jose Mercury News. She is also the author of a children's novel, Sarah's Waterfall (2009), which won a NAPPA Award, a Mom's Choice (Gold) Award, and a Skipping Stones Award. Among her other honors are the Poetry International Prize, the John Masefield Award, Sierra magazine's Nature Writing Award, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Her poetry has been featured on National Public Radio and has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and many other journals. Her nature essays have appeared in The Sun, Story Quarterly, California Living, and in anthologies such as Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals (1998); Short Takes: Model Essays for Composition (1999); and Stories from Where We Live: The California Coast (2001). 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.
