About
Sydney Elliott graduated from Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop in 2015, where she now works as the Managing Editor. She is a full-time English instructor at Tillamook Bay Community College and lives on the Oregon coast. She is the editor of the Community College Humanities Review and serves as the Community College Humanities Association's National Publications Director. She is also the editor of Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon. Sydney kayaks, surfs, teaches yoga, is a Search and Rescue volunteer, and sings in a jazz ensemble.
Sydney grew up in rural Oregon and attended Philomath High School. She moved to Portland, Oregon, to attend Portland State University, where she earned her B.A. in English and M.A. in English with a creative thesis in poetry. She continued to work at Portland State in the English Department's graduate writing program as well as working as the coordinator of a writers-in-the-schools project.
Sydney has always been involved with music, singing in local bands, and her careers have led her down several paths, working for non-profits arts organizations and serving in some of Portland's most beloved restaurants.
Sydney kept gravitating to the coast and eventually moved there and joined the faculty at Tillamook Bay Community College (TBCC) and has presented her unique approaches to curriculum at regional and national conferences. In 2014, she won the distinguished Regional Educator Award for the Community College Humanities Association. She was also TBCC's teacher of the year in 2017 and recently was awarded the 2020 Dale P. Parnell Faculty Distinction Recognition award from the American Association of Community Colleges for her commitment to her students both inside and outside the classroom. In 2022, Sydney was awarded the Community College Humanities Association's David A. Berry National Distinguished Humanities Educator Award as well as a Distinguished Service Award for exceptional leadership in editing and publishing.
In 2015, Sydney graduated from Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and is the Managing Editor for RWW's online journal, Soundings. She has continued to write, edit, and develop curriculum while teaching full time.
She loves living on the coast with her partner, Jason, and their two dogs and two cats (all rescues).