Elizabeth Bodien, who grew up in the “burned-over” district of western New York, now lives near Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania. When only seventeen years old, she travelled and studied around the world with the International School of America. In the ‘60s, she lived in Berkeley, California and graduated with a cultural anthropology degree from the University of California. Her graduate studies culminated with degrees in consciousness studies from John F. Kennedy University and the history and phenomenology of religion from the Graduate Theological Union, where her final work was entitled "Terra Incognita: The Necessity of Wilderness."

Bodien was an English instructor in Japan, an organic farmer in the Oregon mountains, a childbirth instructor in West Africa, and a Montessori teacher, among other work. She taught cultural anthropology and critical thinking before retiring. 

After retirement, she earned an MFA degree in poetry from Western Colorado State University. Bodien is the author of two books of poetry: Blood, Metal, Fiber, Rock and Oblique Music: A Book of Hours and four poetry chapbooks from various publishers. Her poetry has appeared in Frogpond, Crannóg and Parabola, among other publications and in Across the Long Bridge: An Anthology of Award-Winning Poems, and Tanka Society of America Anthology. She has appeared on radio and TV and has taught workshops in poetry and poetics. Journeys with Fortune: A Tale of Other Lives, which was published in 2019, is a nonfiction collection of the past lives she relived while in hypnotic trance.