Ellen Santasiero

13th February 2021

2020 "Bend's First Poetry Slam" an essay by Ellen Santasiero

It was a late evening in the early aughts at the Grove Bar in Bend when seventeen poets got up, one by one, squinted into a red Klieg light, and performed their work at the town’s first Poetry Slam, ...

11th March 2021

2020 "Bones in Rake's Meadow" An essay by Ellen Santasiero

Later, I found a small half jawbone—fawn, or coyote. I felt its smooth scrubbed dove shape with my fingers, my palms.

January 2018 • 14th February 2021

2018 "After the election" poem by Ellen Santasiero (scroll to 2nd poem on page)

Skeleton sits in the corner/ counts: metacarpals, tibia/ locates: coccyx, humerus/

26th February 2021

2018 "Talking to Ghosts" an essay by Ellen Santasiero

You existed in some kind of limbo, some kind of liminal space. And like other liminal beings, you became haunted, and in danger of haunting.

Youshare Project • 13th February 2021

2018 "Breaking Free" an essay by Ellen Santasiero

I drove north, away from the city, on the Taconic, one of New York’s old tree-lined parkways. ...

13th February 2021

More to Say | An Essay on Marginalia by Ellen Santasiero

Literature is not exhaustible, for the simple and sufficient reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.  —Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

13th February 2021

"Second Thoughts" an essay by Ellen Santasiero

New things tell the world that we are prosperous, and therefore, powerful. At the most fundamental level, though, surrounding ourselves with new things is a hedge against that final loss of power. Running our hands over the bright threads of a brand...

7x7 LA • 17th December 2020

2020 "No Place Safer" — Visual art by Ellen Santasiero

13th February 2021

2015 "An Interview with Mosley Wotta" by Ellen Santasiero

From his home in the high desert of central Oregon, artist MOsley WOtta mixes media, plays with form, and works tirelessly with youth arts education.

13th February 2021

2018 Review of Beth Alvarado's Anxious Attachments by Ellen Santasiero

Make yourself a cup of tea. While it steeps, begin reading the first essay in Beth Alvarado’snew collection, Anxious Attachments ...

13th February 2021

"Giving Weight" an essay by Ellen Santasiero

One winter evening, when I was twenty-six years old and recovering from a long illness, I decided to go out dancing. ...

13th February 2021

"Lost and Found" an essay by Ellen Santasiero

I am standing at the foot of a grain elevator, looking up at silver, corrugated walls. I am traveling in central Oregon, a place I've come to live, a place far from the town in which I was born. ...