THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Ellen Bass
“We have seen through the centuries, legislating anybody’s sexual desire is bound to fail.”
Poet, author, educator. Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and winner of a 2021 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Poetry. Administrator at Project Place, a social service center in Boston from 1970-74. In the early 1970s, began publishing her own and others’ poetry. In 1973, co-edited with Florence Howe a collection of poems entitled No More Masks: An Anthology of Poems by Women. Nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. Founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and in the Santa Cruz jails. Graduated from Goucher College in 1968. Master’s degree from Boston University in 1970.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, January 2022


Photo 1. Photo of Ellen by Steve Dunwell, used as the cover of I’m Not Your Laughing Daughter, her first book of poetry published by the University of Massachusetts Press, 1973, Photo 2. Ellen (center) teaching an early workshop in Santa Cruz in the ’70s.
More About Ellen:
- Ellen Bass official website
- Ellen Bass Facebook page
- Pacific University Oregon
- Select interviews with Ellen Bass
- Rich Territory: An Interview with Ellen Bass, by Elizabeth Jacobson, July 12, 2021
- The Poem is an Exploration: Ellen Bass Interviewed by Wallace Ludel, August 4, 2020
- Any Life Is a Miracle: a Conversation with Ellen Bass, by Meryl Natchez, May 16, 2020
- A Conversation with Ellen Bass, by Julie Murphy
- Select works by Ellen Bass, The New Yorker
- No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women, Edited by Florence Howe and Ellen Bass, Introduction by Florence Howe, Publication date 1973
- Ellen Bass Papers (Collection 2227). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Wikipedia page