Elee Kraljii Gardiner
About the Teacher
Why study with them?
Elee Kraljii Gardiner (she/her) is a writer, editor, and creative mentor and the current Poet Laureate of Vancouver. A community-based artist and frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, sound and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational art installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time.
She is the author of three poetry books. serpentine loop (2016) uses the vocabulary of the body and ice to explore gender and social constructs. Trauma Head (2018) is an experimental long poem about her experience with vertebral artery dissection and stroke. The third, sometimes, forest (2026), considers how networks of lateral support create a relational way of being with the self and the more-than-human world. In spring 2027 the ecologically-based poetry collaboration Take Rain co-written with Gary Barwin will be published.
She is also the editor of two anthologies: Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with John Asfour. She holds an MA in Hispanic Literature from University of British Columbia and an MFA in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a director of Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors, and administers the Warland Award for hybrid literature.
Elee is the recipient of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, Lina Chartrand Award for Social Justice and the Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentor Award. Her writing has been a finalist for the Souster Award, Kroetsch Award, bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, City of Vancouver Book Award and in the US for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and Montaigne Medal.
She is the author of three poetry books. serpentine loop (2016) uses the vocabulary of the body and ice to explore gender and social constructs. Trauma Head (2018) is an experimental long poem about her experience with vertebral artery dissection and stroke. The third, sometimes, forest (2026), considers how networks of lateral support create a relational way of being with the self and the more-than-human world. In spring 2027 the ecologically-based poetry collaboration Take Rain co-written with Gary Barwin will be published.
She is also the editor of two anthologies: Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with John Asfour. She holds an MA in Hispanic Literature from University of British Columbia and an MFA in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a director of Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors, and administers the Warland Award for hybrid literature.
Elee is the recipient of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, Lina Chartrand Award for Social Justice and the Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentor Award. Her writing has been a finalist for the Souster Award, Kroetsch Award, bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, City of Vancouver Book Award and in the US for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and Montaigne Medal.
