Elena Montes is a Costa Rican-American poet, fiction writer, and artist whose work explores the emotional and psychological landscapes that shape identity.

She grew up between her parents’ homes in Inglewood and on the Westside of Los Angeles. After moving to New York, she attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied creative writing, philosophy, and race theory. She was awarded the 2024 Andrea Klein Wilson Award for Poetry for two poems appearing in her debut collection, Wishbones.

Her work centers on memory, family, and the complexities of relationships, often through hybrid forms that move between image and text. She is interested in the space between—between genres, between what is remembered and what is reconstructed, between what is said and what remains unspoken.