Elaine Woo

Born in Saskatchewan, moving to the West Coast as a young child, Elaine Woo is a poet, librettist, comics creator, artist, non-fiction writer, and video-maker. She graduated from the University of British Columbia’s creative writing program and began her writing career in 2006. Elaine has published two poetry collections: Cycling with the Dragon (2014, Nightwood Editions) and Put Your Hand in Mine (2019, Signature Editions). In 2021 Put Your Hand in Mine was cited by Sheryl MacKay on CBC Radio’s Northwest by Northwest and bookseller Tamara Gorin as one of the three best poetry collections in recent years. Elaine also translated French Canadian Jean-Paul Martino’s Git Net from French to English. This translation in turn spawned multiple translations internationally. Her work has been published in Canada, the US, the UK, France, and Hong Kong, and appears in print or online in Prism International, Grain, The Maynard, The Elephants, Arc Poetry, carte blanche, West Coast Line, Otoliths, and h&, and in the anthologies Sustenance, Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, Shy (winner of an Independent Book Publishers silver medal in 2014), The Enpipe Line, and V6A. Her poetry was featured in New York City’s Arteidolia in a collaboration with her close friend, Margaret Schulz Johnston. An alumna of the Vancouver International Song Institute’s (VISI) Art Song Lab, her art song collaboration with composer Daniel Marshall won a Boston Metro Opera festival prize in 2013.