The Cannon Beach Library’s NW Authors Series welcomes award-winning poet Brian Stephen Ellis to celebrate the 30th anniversary of National Poetry Month. Ellis is a poet, teacher, and performance artist critics have called a lyrical and authentic storyteller and a genius of intimacy and humor. Ellis argues against determinism–the belief that human actions are predetermined or ordained. Instead, his poetry and short fiction examine how, why and what drives human thought and actions. In the process he flips ideas and actions on their heads and looks at them from an opposite perspective.
Ellis has been nominated six times for a Pushcart Prize, was awarded the William Stafford War No War award, and was a Finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2025. Ellis moved to Portland in 2011, leaving Boston, where he had been a member of the Boston Poetry Slam. He was a co-founder of the Whitehaus Family Record independent record label. He is a story producer for Back Fence PDX, a live storytelling series, and a teacher of creative writing at Portland Community College. His serial novel, All Anything Anyone, is currently available on Substack: allanythinganyone.substack.com Ellis is the author of the short story collection, Pretty Much the Last Hardcore Kid in This Town, and of the poetry collections Against Common Sense, American Dust Revisited, Often Go Awry, Uncontrolled Experiments in Freedom, and Yesterday Won’t Goodbye. He lives in Portland, Oregon.