About

Elle Newton is a writer, editor and creative director based in San Francisco, California. Her writing, advocacy and criticism has appeared in print and online, on radio including NPR and KPFA, and has been adapted for the stage. Newton leads workshops, presents at conferences, and organizes events locally and nationally. 

As a curator, Newton has organized exhibitions in Oakland and Los Angeles, and has written about the art world for Flaunt Magazine, Flash Art, Ground Mag and others. As resident curator at B4BEL4B Gallery in Oakland, she organized a range of acclaimed events and exhibitions on digital art, activism and journalism. She studied under the mentorship of art historian Dr. Moira Roth at Mills College, and studied history at the University of California Los Angeles.

Newton is cofounder and editor in chief of Poets Reading The News, the San Francisco-based 501(c)3 publisher bridging poetry and journalism. It includes a digital publishing platform, curriculum program and event series, as well as a popular fellowship for emergent poetry editors from across the country.

She is founder of the UX/web design agency Trailsend Creative, where she leads a team in developing digital presence for nonprofits, solopreneurs and organizations aligned with social good.

Newton is involved in movements for environmental justice and the rights of nature. She spends her leisure time studying and documenting ecosystems (what she calls earth poems) throughout northern California. Newton grew up in West Marin and Oakland, a hybrid experience that opened her to the harmony of dissonant landscapes and lessons from an early age. She has visited 36 countries solo and has lived in Bangkok, Firenze, Penang, and in 2018 she spent nine months living in an Airstream on Pfeiffer Ridge in Big Sur. At present, Newton calls the redwood and live oak forests of the Bay Area home.