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Elaine Bleakney is a poet and author living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Her book of poems, Take the Exit Then Exit, is forthcoming from Understory Books in Spring 2026. Her books include For Another Writing Back, an avant-memoir in lyric prose (Sidebrow Books, 2014), the chapbook 20 Paintings by Laura Owens, an ekphrastic conversation (Poor Claudia, 2013), and the tear-apart anthology Poem in Your Pocket (Abrams, 2009), which she edited.

Register here for Deep Blue Time, a writing workshop at Rare Bird Farm near Asheville, NC this July. 

Poems

Writings


Elaine Bleakney's recent poems have appeared in Harp & Altar, theYale ReviewAction, Spectacle, and the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review. Her poems have also been published in American Poetry Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Verse Dailyand elsewhere. Her lyrical prose essays have appeared in the BelieverLiterary Hub, and the Kenyon Review. She writes Stranger and Stranger on Substack.

Elaine has taught writing workshops at the University of California at Irvine, Penland School of Craft, UNC Asheville, Flagler College, and elsewhere. She has been a guest writer at Warren Wilson College and Kenyon College in Ohio, her alma mater.

Stranger and Stranger It’s all I have to bring today — /This, and my heart beside —
Thank you! You will receive Stranger and Stranger every other Monday.
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