El Jones

El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor, and abolitionist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was the 5th Poet Laureate of Halifax and a 2015 resident of the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. El was the poet in residence at U of T Scarborough in 2021. She won 2 Atlantic Journalism Gold awards in 2018 and 2019. In 2016, El was a recipient of the Burnley “Rocky” Jones human rights award for her work with prisoners. She was the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. El received her PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political and Canadian Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. 

El was the lead author of the report, Defunding the Police: Defining the Way Forward for HRM. Her second book, Abolitionist Intimacies, a collection of poetry and prose examining abolition through Black feminist practices of care and resistance is being released from Fernwood Press in November 2022.