Elaine van der Geld’s writing explores the intersections of trauma, healing, and social justice. She writes in order to extend empathy and challenge the status quo, representing experiences that are often silenced. She’s fascinated by the ways in which the terrible, the beautiful, and the messy co-exist and overlap in daily life. A Canadian in Belgium, she lives with her daughter, partner, and cat.
Elaine van der Geld’s short stories, essays, and poems regularly appear in online and print magazines, including The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Normal School, Grain, CV2, Hippocampus, and Verse Daily. She received a notable essay mention in Best American Essays 2020, was shortlisted for both the EVENT and Room CNF contests, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, an MA in English literature, and is an alumna of the Humber School for Writers. She is currently seeking representation for her first novel, Nothing is Forgiven.
Other things about me:
1) I think books and stories can save your life. They saved mine in more ways than I can count.
2) Representation matters and feminism is intersectional.
3) Literature shows me what it is to be a person in all its messy, terrible glory.
4) I am obsessed with what it means to have a body. By which I mean I am obsessed with the way it is acted upon by social forces and constructs. But I also mean I am obsessed with its decay and its pleasures. With the way emotion moves through it, the way one’s body bears the marks of a life. The way the world can lead you out of your body, but also how your body can bring you back to the world—and yourself.
5) I never wanted children until I had my daughter. The mother-daughter dynamic is endlessly fascinating to me.
6) I’ve worked a lot of jobs. Here are the highlights: blackjack dealer, casino cash cage manager, figure model, assistant photographer, jam factory worker.
Contact:
vandergelde@isb.be
twitter: @elainevan
Elaine van der Geld 