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).

Forthcoming Poems in MockingHeart Review and American Writers Review

Two different literary journals have recently published or accepted my poems. Editor-in-Chief Tyler Robert Sheldon of MockingHeart Review just published “Packages and Gifts.”  Poetry Editor Wayne Benson, Editor D. Ferrara, and Founder Patricia A. Florio will publish my poem “Leaving…
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Article about “Combating Unauthorized YouTube Videos of Children’s Books”

Recently, I had trouble with people posting unauthorized YouTube readings of my award-winning picture book about bullying How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 6th edition 2018). I wrote an essay about this problem: “Combating Unauthorized YouTube Videos of…
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How the Moon Regained Her Shape on SCBWI’s Reading List for books for children about mental health

My award-winning fiction picture book about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 6th edition 2018), is on the May 2022 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Reading List on the theme of Mental Health Awareness. See…
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