Colleen J. McElroy

Colleen McElroy was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a military family that moved often. She earned a PhD in ethnolinguistic patterns of dialect differences and oral traditions from the University of Washington. McElroy has written short stories, plays, television scripts, and nonfiction; her collections of poetry include Sleeping with the Moon (2007), winner of the 2008 PEN Oakland National Literary Award; Travelling Music (1998); What Madness Brought Me Here: New and Selected Poems, 1968–1988 (1990); Queen of the Ebony Isles (1984), winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and Winters without Snow (1979). Her honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Fulbright Program.

McElroy started writing intensely in her 30s. In an article for Seattle Woman magazine, she attributed her awareness of language to her training in speech pathology. McElroy’s work is influenced by her extensive travels, the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, and the experience of African American women. Her books of nonfiction include Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar (2001) and A Long Way from St. Louie (1997), a travel memoir.

McElroy was director of speech and hearing services at Western Washington University before becoming a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington. She edited The Seattle Review from 1995 to 2006.