Daniela Elza lived on three continents before immigrating to Canada in 1999. Her poetry collections are the broken boat (2020), the weight of dew (2012), milk tooth bane bone (2013), the book of it (2011), slow erosions (2020) and SCAR/CITY forthcoming with McGill-Queen’s University Press (Spring, 2025). Daniela’s debut essay/memoir collection Is This an Illness or an Accident? is also forthcoming with Caitlin Press in the Spring of 2025.
Daniela's work has won numerous contests, is published internationally, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology multiple times. In 2011 Daniela earned her doctorate in Philosophy of Education from Simon Fraser University. Her thesis was nominated for the 2011 CAGS UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award Competition, and received the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal, recognizing her dissertation for not only addressing the long standing epistemological split between the philosophic and poetic, but attempting to heal that very split. She is the recipient of the 2024 Colleen Thibaudeau Award for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry.
Daniela works as an editor, mentor, and creative writing instructor on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver.