Elise Houcek holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Notre Dame, where she was the recipient of a two-year fellowship and an Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award. She also has a BA from Kalamazoo College, where she double-majored in Creative Writing and Religion, graduating summa cum laude and winning the O.M. Allen Prize in English, the Voynovich Essay Prize in Religion, and the Dwight and Leola Stocker Prize for Excellence in Poetry. Called "messages from a far-off future" by Pultizer Prize-winning author Diane Seuss, her writing has appeared variously in print and online, including FENCE, the Cleveland Review of Books, Copenhagen Lit, and Relegation Books' R&R Magazine. Her most recent book, From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson, collaboratively written with Zoe Darsee, is forthcoming from Inside the Castle in 2025. She is also a caregiver, teacher, visual artist, and researcher, and runs Ludi Juvenales, a childhood poetry, art and games series.