Elisavietta Ritchie's fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, photojournalism, and translations from Russian, French, Malay and Indonesian have appeared in numerous publications including Poetry, American Scholar, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, National Geographic, New York Quarterly, JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, Confrontation, Press, New Letters, Kalliope, Nimrod, Canadian Woman Studies, Ann Arbor Review, Loch Raven Review, Innisfree, Broadkill Review, Beltway Poetry, ArLiJo, Calyx, and many others; anthologies including Sound & Sense; The 90th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, When I'm An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple; If I Had My Life To Live Over I Would Pick More Daisies; The Tie That Binds; If I Had A Hammer; Grow Old Along With Me / The Best Is Yet To Be; Generation To Generation; New to North America, Beyond Lament (poems on the Holocaust); September Eleven, Life On The Line: Selections on Words & Healing; The Use of Narratives in the Helping Professions: A Teacher's Casebook; and many others including several international anthologies from Lost Tower Books (England) and Prosopisia (India).

In Haste I Write You This Note: Stories & Half-Stories, winner of the premiere Washington Writers' Publishing House Fiction Competition (2000), is now an ebook (2015). Raking The Snow won the Washington Writer's Publishing House poetry prize (1982). Flying Time: Stories & Half-Stories, her first short fiction collection, includes four PEN Syndicated Fiction winners. Tightening The Circle Over Eel Country won the Great Lakes Colleges Association's "New Writer's Prize for Best First Book of Poetry 1975-76."

Her other books of poetry include, most recently PAX: An Anthology of Southern Maryland Poetry (2019); The Scotch Runner (2019); Lunatic Moons (2019); Babushka's Beads: A Geography of Genes (2016); Guy Wires (2015); Feathers, Or, Love on the Wing (a collaboration with artists Megan Richard and Suzanne Shelden); Tiger Upstairs on Connecticut Avenue; Cormorant Beyond the Compost, Awaiting Permission to Land; The Arc of the Storm; Elegy For The Other Woman. Chapbooks include: The Spirit of the Walrus, A Sheaf of Dreams & Other Games; Real Toads; Moving To Larger Quarters; The Problem With Eden, A Wound-Up Cat & Other Bedtime Stories; and two novellas in verse, Timbot and Wild Garlic: The Journal of Maria X. New collections are in progress.

"Camille Pissarro's THE BATHER Speaks" won The Ledge 2011 poetry award; two poems won annual Poetry Society of America awards. Grants include a graduate teaching fellowship, American University; four DC Commission for the Arts grants; and four Virginia Center for the Creative Arts grants.

With Myra Sklarew she created A Splendid Wake, to honor deceased poets of the Greater Washington Area. The organization now includes several hundred live poets. She founded The Wineberry Press, and edited anthologies including Finding the Name and The Dolphin's Arc: Poems on Endangered Creatures of the Sea. Her photojournalism has appeared in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Bay Weekly, and others.

Composers David Owens, Jackson Berkey, Halim El-Dabh, David L. Brunner and others have created musical pieces based on Elisavietta's poetry. Owens' most recent scores are Raking the Snow and At The Landing

Many years as a poet-in-the-schools, not only in the Greater Washington Area but in Canada and Australia.

During recent decades, Elisavietta has been stirring the pot for poetry, and the combining of poetry-art-music-prose, in Southern Maryland. Her most recent lecture to a well-traveled retirement group was on her poetry readings in Australia.

Ritchie has read at the Library of Congress, Harbourfront, Folger Library, Pittsburgh International Forum, many libraries, universities, schools and other cultural centers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, and under the auspices of the United States Information Agency, in Brazil, around the Far East, and the Balkans. She teaches writing workshops for adults and children, serves as occasional poet-in-the-schools, and has lectured to teachers on this program.

Education includes: The Sorbonne, University of Paris, where she received a diploma with "Mention Très Bien" (equivalent to magna cum laude) from the Cours de Civilisation Française; Cornell University; University of California at Berkeley (combined BA in French, Russian and English); Georgetown University (Russian courses); American University (MA in French literature, minor in Russian studies); The Writer's Center; and the Toronto Martial Arts Commission.

Washington Post Obituary

Elisavietta Artamonoff Ritchie Farnsworth, a prominent and prolific American writer, poet, teacher, essayist, and translator passed away on January 13th, 2025 in Solomons, Maryland. She was instrumental in encouraging writers in both Washington DC and Southern Maryland to develop and publish books and poetry for over sixty years.

Born on June 29, 1932, in Kansas City, Missouri, she was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, Cornell University, University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University, and American University in Washington DC. 

Formerly married to Lyell H. Ritchie, she is survived by three children (Lyell Kirk Ritchie, Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, Alexander George Ritchie) six grandchildren, and a great grandchild. Her husband Clyde H. Farnsworth, a prominent journalist, lives in Southern Maryland. 

She spent much of her life in Washington DC and Southern Maryland where she encouraged generations of new and established writers to hone their craft. She is remembered for her deep engagement with nature, and the interwoven narratives of history and personal identity.

Her work appeared in publications as diverse as The New York Times, The New York Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and those of the Poetry Society of America. She has published over 20 poetry volumes.