Elizabeth Galoozis

poet, writer, librarian

Elizabeth Galoozis’s debut full-length collection, Law of the Letter (2025), won the Hillary Gravendyk Prize from the Inlandia Institute. Her work has appeared in Witness, RHINO, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and for Best of the Net. Her poems explore lineage, language, and queerness, and she draws on her background as a librarian by using classification, indexes, and other human attempts to categorize the world, as both form and subject. 

Elizabeth is a poetry reader at The Maine Review and a member of the Workshops Committee for Women Who Submit. She has presented and published widely in the field of library and information science, particularly in the areas of equity, inclusion, and pedagogy, and has co-edited two books for the Association of College and Research Libraries. 

Elizabeth lives in southern California, on unceded Tongva and Kizh territory, with her wife Michelle and an abundance of fruit trees. 

Praise for Law of the Letter

“Law of the Letter artfully and skillfully embodies a love of language alongside a deep respect for meaning beyond the laws of the letters that typically accompany the written word. The pieces engage with etymology, origin, and derivation in a manner both contemplative and probing.”

-Jennifer Schneider in Heavy Feather Review

“By acknowledging this complex interplay between words’ power and their limits, we might create space for what we need in the world. Through these honest and compassionate poems, Galoozis reminds us that, together, remaking the world is possible. We can aspire towards a future that affirms our shared humanity, offers tenderness, and ensures our survival.”

-CD Eskilson in Barrelhouse

“Where we lack the comfort of certainty, though, Galoozis gives us the comfort of kinship—showing us that we aren’t alone in our desire to make order from the mess. And that we can continue to experience pleasure despite uncertainty.”-Abbie Kiefer in The Common