About
Elaine Shelly is a writer, journalist and filmmaker. She was awarded a Crip Camp Adobe Fellowship to begin working on her documentary, Canaries in the Mine, which looks at disparities in healthcare access through the lives of Black women with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
She was recently awarded an MIT reporting fellowship to write about long COVID in Black women. Her article about deinstitutionalizing disabled people appeared in the fall 2021 issue of Generations Journal. This writing examines the intersection of anti-Black racism and ableism that led to policies favoring nursing home placement of people with disabilities over community-based care.
She was accepted into Cave Canem, a poetry retreat for African American poets. At Cave Canem, Elaine studied poetry for three summers. She studied music and cultural development at the Jamaica School of Music in Kingston, Jamaica, thanks to an international fellowship awarded by the Rotary Foundation. Elaine holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.