Sophia Hsin Photography

Elee Kraljii Gardiner

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, sound and visual artists. She is the author of the poetry books sometimes, forest (Talonbooks, 2026), Trauma Head (Anvil Press, 2018) and serpentine loop (Anvil Press, 2016) and editor of the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living (Anvil Press, 2019) and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with John Asfour (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012) as well as nine anthologies from Thursdays Writing Collective, a program she founded with Downtown Eastside writers in 2008.

Her chapbooks include Trauma Head: the medical file (Otter Press, 2017), Residence (Otter Press, 2023), and with Gary Barwin WATCHER (Timglaset Editions, 2022) and CHROMA (Pinhole Poetry, 2025).

Elee holds an MA in Hispanic Literature from University of British Columbia and an MFA in Poetry from Institute of American Indian Arts and 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.

Elee co-hosts the Whole Cloth reading series at University of British Columbia’s Green College with Dr. Bronwen Tate and also directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, an online international program pairing authors with mentors. She is the seventh Poet Laureate of Vancouver.