About Anne Elliott

Education
Anne Elliott began her creative career as an installation artist, filling whitewashed rooms with stream-of-consciousness text. She received a BFA in sculpture from Washington University, St. Louis, and an MFA in visual arts from UC San Diego, where her teachers Jerome Rothenberg and David Antin turned her onto spoken poetry.

Spoken Word
She moved to New York in 1991, and quickly became a fixture in the downtown spoken word scene, participating in poetry slams and performing with the postfeminist talk group, The Pussy Poets. Her spoken word hit the air of numerous venues in the 1990’s, after The Pussy Poets disbanded: The Whitney Museum (performing alongside their Beats show), The New York Historical Society, The New School, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, KGB Bar, PS 122, Here Theater, Dixon Place, Lincoln Center, The Nuyorican, The Knitting Factory, CMJ Music Marathon, and bars, galleries, and coffeehouses throughout the five boroughs. On the road, Elliott took the mic at Woodstock ’94; Insomniacathon in Louisville, Kentucky; The German-American Institute in Heidelberg; City Hall in Burlington, Vermont; and the Black Cat in Washington, DC.

Intermedia/Collaboration
In the mid-1990’s, Elliott began branching out from solo spoken word. She has published the works of poets and experimental writers on her chapbook imprint, Big Fat Press, and released spoken-word audio under her label Big Fat Talk. She has joined forces with musicians, performing with bands Hot Sauce Gizzard and Continuous Cocktail Hour, and collaborating with composer Jed Distler on an opera, “Godfrey’s Moon,” performed in 2002 at the Bowery Poetry Club. She also occasionally gigs solo on the ukulele, playing original country songs. She was a featured poet in the documentary film “Beef,” by Jon Baskin.

Publications
On the page, Elliott’s poetry and fiction has appeared in anthologies Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets (St. Martins), Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poet’s Café (Henry Holt), and Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Vehicule), as well as periodicals Pindeldyboz, Ars Medica, Hobart, Smokelong Quarterly, Interview, Excursus Literary Journal, WV, Lungfull, and FRiGG(forthcoming).

Audio Recordings
Elliott’s work is featured on the following audio compilations: Poemfone: New Word Order (Tomato Records), State of the Union (Atavistic), and Family Matters (Tongue’n’Groove). She also was featured on MTV’s syndicated spoken word show, “Man in the Moon,” which played in college radio markets across the country.

Honors
Elliott was a 2001 fiction fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been shortlisted for the Faulkner-Wisdom writing competition (both the novella and novel-in-progress categories) and James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

(last updated 3/30/2007)