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Elizabeth Cohen
author, poet, activist, writing coach

Writer, editor, journalist, mama, and dog guardian Elizabeth Cohen hails from New Mexico. New stories can be read in The Coachella Review, Spotlong Review, Cagibi, Minyan Magazine, Confetti, Persim mon Tree, and other literary venues. Her poems have been recently published in Blue Mesa, San Antonio Review, Crosswinds, Yale Review, and anthologies such as Love in the Original Language, Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975, Ink, and the forthcoming Climate Change Chronicles. She is the author of five books of poetry, a celebrated memoir, a book of short stories, and a co-authored book of essays with Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman surgeon. Her newest book of poems, Mermaids of Albuquerque, drops this November!

She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia and recently retired from her position as an associate professor of English from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh to work on her writing and as a full-time book coach.

She serves on the editorial board of Mnemosyne, a boutique publisher of memoirs by women, an imprint of Saint Julian Press, in Houston, Texas; on the board and as an editor for High Desert Haint, a Santa Fe publisher, and served on the board of the North Star Museum of the Underground Railroad, among other associations. She edits and runs the online magazine Memoirabilia (coming soon!).

She loves books and writing them. She loves a tough freelance journalism assignment she can dig into. She likes to draw, although she is pretty bad at it. She loves to go to far flung places and then write about them.

She stands for things. A peace advocate, she stands for fair pay, equal rights, reproductive rights, queer and trans rights, diversity, feminism, preserving the natural places of the planet, protecting the animals.

She volunteers at Barrett House, a women's shelter in Albuquerque where she runs writing workshops. She works with special needs children in the Albuquerque Public Schools.

She loves kids, dogs, and horses. She loves toast.

That about covers it.

NYT Notable Book Author

Former Editor of Saranac Review

Visiting Professor WCSU
MFA Mentor, WCSU
SUNY Plattsburgh Associate Professor

Saint Julian Press

Kelsay Books

Alien Buddha Press

Gotham Writers Workshops Instructor
Book Reviewer (American Book Review, @theinkwell)
MacDowell Fellow
Columbia University MFA
UNM BA, Magna Cum Laude,

Oprah Magazine Book-of-the-Week

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter...AND a New Anthology

My relationship to the heart is complex. it has buoyed me and trashed me, confounded me and sent me spiraling into thousands of hours of research when my daughter's dad needed a transplant (he got one). Now I have a new heart connection: poet and writer Carol Lipsyc edited this amazing anthology, coming out this fall, and included my poems! I am so proud of her, of this book and of my poem's inclusion. The book seems to me like a perfect present for someone you love. Or a future Valentine gift. Or a coffee table item. It screams "gift for someone you love" to me. The poets include Eugene D'Andrade and Charles Bukowski!

Thanks go to Carol and her editors at Guernica! https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Improvisational-Anthology-Essential-Anthologies/dp/1771831863