Eleanor Brawley is a poet, author, photographer and award-winning documentary producer. Her work has won grants from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. An exhibit of her poetry and photography was funded by a Regional Artist Project Grant from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Arts and Science Council. Eleanor produced two public television series, Poetry Live, on UNC-TV, hosted by Charles Kuralt and Dannye Romine Powell featuring twenty-four North Carolina poets. In 1999, she received the Fortner Writers Award from St. Andrews College.
Her most recent book of poems, The Floating Bridge, was published in 2021 by Main Street Rag Press. More information can be found here.
Her poetry chapbook, A Short History of Music was published by St. Andrews Colleg Press in 2000. Her poems have been published in Kakalak, Wellspring, Princeton's Theology Today, The Crucible, Pembroke Magazine, Main Street Rag among others. She won First Place in Free Verse in the Robert Ruark contest. Her work has appeared in several anthologies.
In 2005, Eleanor Brawley conceived and curated the photographic exhibition, Families of Abraham, which is still travelling. A book on the exhibit was published and funded by the Lillly Endowment. She co-produced a television special on the exhibit in 2007, for Public Television. In 2009, she was selected for a panel called Exhibiting Religion at the American Association of Museums’ annual meeting in Philadelphia. The PBS NEWSHOUR featured the Families of Abraham exhibition and interviewed her for its arts blog.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Eleanor received an M.A. in television and film with a minor in religious studies. She makes her home in Rhinebeck, New York. She has two grown daughters, Lisa and Diana and three grandchildren.