Elizabeth Allen writes in Sydney and works as a bookseller at Gleebooks. She holds a first-class Honours degree in Australian Literature and a Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) from the University of Sydney.
Her poetry, short fiction, and literary criticism has found frequent publication in well-respected journals and anthologies, such as Cordite, Journal of Poetics Research, Bodega, Overland, Australian Book Review (ABR), Southerly, Otoliths, HEAT, Ajar, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Mascara Literary Review, Contemporary Australian Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann, 2016), and the Best Australian Poems (Black Inc. 2012 and 2014).
The author of two full-length collections of poetry, Body Language (Vagabond Press, 2012) and Present (Vagabond Press, 2017), Elizabeth won the Dame Leonie Kramer Prize in 2001 and the Anne Elder Award in 2012. She has been shortlisted for the Peter Porter Prize, the FAW John Shaw Neilsen Poetry Award, and a Red Room Poetry Fellowship.
Elizabeth was a co-judge of the Noel Rowe Poetry Award in 2016 and 2018 and a co-judge of the Mosman Youth Awards in Literature for many years. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Arteles Creative Center (Finland) and Bundanon Trust (NSW). She was the editor of the ABR anthology, States of Poetry NSW, in 2016 and she has extensive experience running poetry workshops for both children and adults in schools and community settings.