About

“Heller uses a storytelling voice with modern, accessible language. Her well-written prose moves the reader forward as she creates reader empathy for the moon, and makes readers want to know what the moon will do to overcome the sun’s bullying. The text never feels too long but sings with a lyrical storytelling rhythm. Heller has obvious insight into how it feels to be bullied or emotionally abused, and the way hurtful words can impact on one. . . . How the Moon Regained Her Shape is both entertaining and a great tool on how to deal with the impact of bullying or emotional abuse, and how to build self-esteem and confidence and belief in oneself. It encourages readers not to hold onto negative comments, but instead to seek out their friends, to seek out positive messages about themselves and to listen to them, and to build up their self-esteem and hold onto their self-worth. This book can spark positive discussion and bring about a greater understanding of bullying or emotional abuse and its impact. If you’ve ever experienced bullying, emotional abuse, or felt put-down, or know someone who has, pick up this book. You won’t regret it. Highly recommended.”
—Cheryl Rainfield on Picture Book Reviews

Janet Ruth Heller is a poet, literary critic, college professor, essayist, playwright, and fiction writer. I am a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and I am currently president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four books of poetry: Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011).

My poetry has appeared in many journals, including Poem, Gargoyle, Presence, Anima, Frogpond, Persimmon Tree, Midstream, The Minnesota Review, Cottonwood, Kentucky Poetry Review, Lilith, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Michigan Reading Journal, Artful Dodge, The Manhattanville Review, Wind, The San Fernando Poetry Journal, Organic Gardening, The Writer, Women: A Journal of Liberation, The Pegasus Review, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Earth’s Daughters, Sugar Mule, Mothers Today, Seeding the Snow, The CEA Critic, and Modern Maturity. My poems have also been published in the anthologies Our Mothers’ Daughters (1979), Poets’ Voices (1984), Light Year (1985), The New Poet’s Anthology (1987), Red Flower (1988), Celebrate the Midwest! (1991), Women’s Glib: A Collection of Women’s Humor (1991), Modern Poems on the Bible (1994), Women’s Spirituality, Women’s Lives (1995), Pandemonium or Life with Kids (1995), Moon Days (1999), I Killed June Cleaver (1999), Women’s Encounters with the Mental Health Establishment: Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper (2002), Writers at Work (2005), Recipes for Readers from Michigan’s Authors and Illustrators (2009), Thirty Days: The Best of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project’s First Year (2013), They Gave Us Life: Celebrating Mothers, Fathers & Others in Haiku (2017), Mizmor Anthology: 2019, Social Gap Experiment: A Creative Anthology (2020), and Poetry Leaves: Adult Contemporary Anthology (2020). My poetry book manuscript Folk Concert was a Finalist for the Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize given by Ashland Poetry Press, judged by Robert Phillips, in 2005.

My poem “Moving In” won the Friends of Poetry annual contest for 1989 and was displayed in buses in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Also, in 1989, I presented a poetry reading at Remembering Rachel: The Second National Conference on the Spiritual Woman at Mercy College in Detroit. My reading was published in a special issue of Women and Language in 1993. I have also given poetry readings at the Midwest Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago (1994), the First International Conference on Judaism, Feminism and Psychology in Seattle (1992), the Writing the Midwest: A Symposium of Scholars and Writers at Michigan State University (1991-present), and many other venues.

I am a founding mother and former editor of Primavera, a literary magazine. Primavera has won awards from Chicago Women in Publishing and the Illinois Arts Council and grants from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and the National Endowment for the Arts. Primavera was among the first journals to publish work by writers like Louise Erdrich.

My scholarly articles have appeared in many journals, including College English, Women’s Studies, Poetics, Language and Style, The Wildean, Twentieth Century Literature, The Charles Lamb Bulletin, Concerning Poetry, Literary Magazine Review, Shakespeare Bulletin, MidAmerica, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Style, The Eighteenth Century, Literature and Psychology, Edith Wharton Review, Nineteenth-Century Prose, The Library Quarterly, Theatre Journal, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and the anthologies American Literary Magazines: The Twentieth Century (Greenwood Press, 1992) and Between Anthropology and Literature: Interdisciplinary Discourse (Routledge, 2002).

My book of literary criticism, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My essay “A Visit to Isle Royale” was aired in May, 1999, over Michigan Public Radio. My creative nonfiction “Returning to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin” appeared in Midwestern Miscellany in 2008. It is part of a memoir that I am working on.

I have published book reviews in Theatre Journal, Library Journal, and The Library Quarterly. My theater reviews have appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette and Shakespeare Bulletin. Fictive Press published my middle-grade fiction chapter book for children about sibling rivalry, The Passover Surprise (2015, 2016).

In my award-winning fiction picture book for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, hardback 2006, paperback 2007, 6th edition 2018), the sun bullies the moon, and her feelings are so badly hurt that she shrinks and leaves the sky. The moon turns to a comet and her friends on earth, who comfort her, and she regains her full shape and self-esteem; also, she returns to her orbit. Influenced by Native American legends and rituals, How the Moon Regained Her Shape emphasizes the importance of self-confidence and friendship, and it gives children a model for dealing with bullies. How the Moon Regained Her Shape won a Book Sense Pick for 2006, a Children’s Choices selection for 2007, a Benjamin Franklin Award for 2007, and a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for 2007. How the Moon Regained Her Shape was also one of five finalists for the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award of 2009, an award given by the Oregon Reading Association.

My short play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Actors under my direction performed The Cell Phone at Writing the Midwest: A Symposium of Scholars and Writers in 2013 in East Lansing, Michigan. Triton College produced another short play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017.

INFLUENCES

My writing has been influenced by many other authors, including British writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, W. B. Yeats, American writers Edna St. Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot, Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich, Judith Minty, Gwendolyn Brooks, Israeli writers Chaim Nachman Bialik, Yehudah Amichai, Rachel Bluwstein, Chaim Guri, S. Y. Agnon, Japanese writer Matsuo Basho, and Hispanic writers Sor Juana, Federico García Lorca, Ruben Darío, Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, and Dámaso Alonso.

UPCOMING WORKS

I’m working on a memoir. I also have a one-act play entitled Facing It that I would like to have produced and published. I also have nine unpublished book manuscripts for children.

PUBLISHERS

- Arbordale Publishing
- University of Missouri Press
- Finishing Line Press
- Anaphora Literary Press
- Fictive Press
- WordTech Communications
- Wipf and Stock Publishers

1 Comment