Elise Paschen was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. While an undergraduate at Harvard, she was awarded the Lloyd McKim Garrison Medal and the Joan Grey Untermyer Poetry Prize. Elise received her M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in 20th Century British and American Literature at Oxford University where she co-founded Oxford Poetry.
Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America from 1988 until 2001, she is the co-founder of Poetry in Motion. Paschen was the featured Illinois poet at the National Book Festival sponsored by the Library of Congress in September 2006.
Elise Paschen is the author of Bestiary (Red Hen Press, 2009), Infidelities (Story Line Press, 1996), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and Houses: Coasts (Oxford: Sycamore Press). Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies and she is editor of The New York Times best-selling anthology Poetry Speaks to Children and Poetry Speaks Who I Am (Sourcebooks).
Dr. Paschen serves as Poet Laureate of Three Oaks, Michigan and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
She lives in Chicago with her husband and their two children.
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