Telaina Eriksen was born in rural Michigan, the youngest of seven children in a working-class family. She received a BA in journalism with concentrations in history, English, and political science from Michigan State University in 1990. She worked for many years in the educational software industry writing technical manuals, and doing marketing and public relations. She returned to school at age thirty-nine to study for her MFA in creative writing, concentrating in both creative nonfiction and poetry. She graduated from Antioch University Los Angeles in December 2009. She later taught creative writing for the Department of English at Michigan State University. Her work has appeared in By One's Own Hand: Writing About Suicide Loss (an anthology), Mother is a Verb (poetry anthology), Under the Sun, the Fem, The Good Men Project, Role Reboot, The Manifest-Station, ARS Medica, Hospital Drive, Marco Polo Quarterly, the Truth About the Fact, poemmemoirstory, and in many other online and print publications. Her essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2011.
