Chelsea Biondolillo is the author of The Skinned Bird (KERNPUNKT Press), a collection of lyric and experimental essays, and two prose chapbooks, Ologies and #Lovesong, both from Etchings Press, UIndy.
Chelsea has a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the Pacific NW College of Art, and a dual master’s degree in both creative writing and environmental studies from the University of Wyoming. Her journalism has appeared on public radio and in Science, Discover Magazine, Nautilus, and others. Her prose has appeared in a number of online and print spaces, including Brevity, The Fourth River, River Teeth, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Flyway, Diagram, Essay Daily, Creative Nonfiction, Vela Mag, Orion, Sonora Review, New Ohio Review, and others.
She was a 2012 Think, Write, Publish communication fellow, funded in part by the NSF, and has received Shenandoah‘s Carter Prize for the Essay and an Olive B. O’Connor fellowship at Colgate University. In 2019, she was an Oregon Literary Arts fellow in nonfiction.
Her essays have twice been included as notable in Best American Essays, 2014 & 2015. And her essay, “Back to the Land” was included in the Best American Science and Nature Essays, 2016. Her work has also been anthologized in Waveform: Twenty-first Century Essays by Women, How We Speak to One Another: an Essay Daily Reader, Environmental and Nature Writing: a Guide and an Anthology and Flash Nonfiction Funny: 71 Very Humorous, Very Short, Very True Stories.
She has studied and worked, thanks to generous gifts, at Breadloaf/ORION and Fine Arts Work Center Summer workshops, and is a Hedgebrook alumna. She has been a writing mentor for PEN America Prison Writing Program, Afghan Women’s Writing Workshops, and AWP’s Writer-to-Writer program.
In addition to writing, she has an art making practice, which usually takes the form of cut and pasted paper collage. She is at work on a project to combine the two.
Chelsea is currently living about an hour outside of her hometown, Portland, OR, where she is a compliance analyst for a healthcare nonprofit by day and by night, teaches writing classes online. Sometimes, there’s even time left over in the day to write.