Thomas Sayers Ellis

Thomas Sayers Ellis grew up in Washington, DC, and earned his MFA from Brown University. He was the author of Crank Shaped Notes (Arrowsmith Press 2021), Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (Graywolf Press, 2013) and The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press, 2005) which earned him the 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award and a Whiting Award. A photographer, Ellis photography books included Paradise/Paradise Layered (St. Petersburg Month of Photography, Inc. 2023) and Mexico (MadHat Press, 2021). He cofounded the Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ellis taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Case Western Reserve University, and Lesley University. He lived in Brooklyn, New York. Ellis died in July of 2025 in St. Petersburg, Florida.