Author Archive: Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past 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 poetry books: 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 scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My 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. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).

Fireflies’ Light journal just published my haiku and senryu

Editors John Han and Mason Arledge just published a haiku and a senryu that I wrote, “Hawthorn Petals” and “Warm Spring Day,” in Fireflies’ Light #31 (April 2025): pages 10 and 51. These are my first poems in this journal….
Read more

Ubiquity recently published my poems “Hot Flash at Work” and “October Thunderstorm in Michigan”

Ubiquity journal recently published my poems “Hot Flash at Work” and “October Thunderstorm in Michigan” in Ubiquity 11, Issue 2 (Fall/Winter 2024): https://ed-ubiquity.gsu.edu/wordpress/creative-works-3/ Yes, this journal is way behind on its publishing schedule. The editor for creative writing is J….
Read more

Published Senryu Poem and Interview in Grand Rapids Magazine

Recently, I published a poem and got interviewed by Ann Byle for Grand Rapids Magazine. Editor Kelly Moyer published my senryu “Quilting” in failed haiku 9, #108 (February 2025) on page 152. The link is https://failedhaiku.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/failedhaikuissue108-final-1.pdf  The title of this…
Read more