Ellie J. Bator (Formerly Anderson)
Literature, Gardening, Family, Friends
2025
I was a First Reader for Passager's winter edition.
The Bear Paw Arts Journal accepted a short prose piece called The Silence of Winter. Many years ago, I worked that piece as a poem in a poetry workshop with David Wagoner at the UW. It works better as a prose poem.
I have recently completed the first draft of a nonfiction book. I'll be starting the revision process for that in a few months.
I assembled a collection of short fiction and a collection of poetry.
For me, 2022 got off to a good start with the publication of Tahuya in Stick Figure. I've always liked that magazine for publishing accessible poetry. So I've been happy to start off the year there. Clerestory printed Bread and included a nice illustration. And the Bryant Review published three poems about my father. I wanted that group to be published together so I am very pleased. You can read all of them under Collections, Poetry 2022. Evening Street and the Comstock Review have both accepted poetry that will be appearing some time soon.
I won third prize in the Idaho Magazine Short Fiction competition for a story called Sun Valley.
Woodcrest has accepted a piece of flash fiction called A Poplar Vase.
I've been revising and re-writing all of my short fiction and assembling it into a collection called Make It Easy. I'm doing the same for the poetry. That little book is called Before the Petals Fall.
I'm changing strategies on getting my novel published. I'm still querying agents but I'm also querying small presses. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I would like to publish all of this stuff sometime soon!
2021 has been a productive year for me. From the publication of an essay called Re-Vision: A Tribute to Raymond Carver in the The Raven's Perch to the acceptance of several poems and more forthcoming in 2022 in The Bryant Review, Stick Figure, and Evening Street. I've posted the essay and all the poetry published this year on this website under the Collection heading.
I won third place in the Soul-Making Keats Memorial Competition with a story called One Night in Smelterville. They have done an online reading of all the winners and posted it here: https://youtu.be/YfWWatOWfdU.
I'm at 49 minutes:13 seconds into the recording.