Elizabeth S Wolf

Elizabeth S. Wolf has published six poetry books. Her breakthrough chapbook Did You Know? won the Rattle Chapbook Prize in 2018. A memoir of growing up in the 1960s and 70s, it revealed the cost of family secrets and her evolving relationship with her mother. In 2020, during the pandemic quarantine, Wolf donated over 300 copies of the book plus writing prompts to incarcerated poets via Prisoner Express. Poems selected from this project appeared in Rattle’s Summer 2022 Tribute to Prisoner Express.

Wolf’s other books include I Am From: Voices from the Mako House in Ghana (KDP, 2023); A Collection of Partings (Kelsay Books, 2022); When Lawyers Wept (Kelsay Books, 2019); and What I Learned (Finishing Line Press, 2017). The anthology I Am From: Voices from the Mako House in Ghana was created from a series of workshops with at-risk children ages 9-17 living in a boarding house in a rural village in West Africa. Her most recent book, Parenting in the Age of Columbine (Kelsay Books, 2025), is a braided collection where each triplet includes a shooting incident, a personal slice of life, and an external quote. In the tradition of “the personal is political” Wolf shows how school shootings have shaped our lives and the way we move in the world. The anchor poem “April 1999” was a finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize in 2022. The video version was featured at the Poetry in Motion Festival in Colorado in 2024.

Wolf is a member of Writers On The Moon, a digital time capsule of independent writers scheduled to land near the moon’s South Pole in 2026. Her work is included in the Lunar Codex archived on the moon at various Artemis Accord Heritage sites. She has published over 160 poems and stories and received four Pushcart nominations. Wolf was featured in Boston Literary Magazine in April 2026.