Elly Bookman’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. She grew up in downtown Atlanta, and then earned an undergraduate degree from Colby College and an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Bookman worked as a lecturer at UNCG before beginning her career as a middle-grade educator. In 2016, she returned to her hometown where she currently teaches writing, literature, and humanities in the junior high at The Paideia School.
While teaching full-time, Bookman consistently writes and publishes her work in some of the most widely-read poetry markets in the country. Her work is guided by an honest, recognizable voice as it engages with questions of American identity. Her poems make the political personal by exploring the underlying emotional currents in everyday scenes. She is currently at work on her first collection.
