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).

Interview with public radio station WMUK about the Ladies’ Library Association of Kalamazoo’s 140th anniversary of our building

My recent interview with Kalamazoo’s public radio station WMUK about the Ladies’ Library Association’s 140th anniversary of our building, the winner of our contest for a new stained-glass window, & our June 7-June 8 events is now posted at the…
Read more

Janet Ruth Heller Autographs Her Award-Winning Books for Children at the Morse Elementary School Book Bazaar on Saturday, May 11, 2019

Janet Ruth Heller will sell and autograph her award-winning books for children at the Morse Elementary School Book Bazaar on Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 475 Cherry Street in Troy, Michigan 48083.  Free admission.  The Bazaar starts at 12 p.m….
Read more

Review of the Middle-Grade Novel Worth by Alexandria LaFaye (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, 2004)

This historical novel set in the 1800s poses a challenging question:  how much is a child worth when differently abled or orphaned? Eleven-year-old Nathaniel “Nate” Peale helps his parents Gabriel and Mary Eva to farm their land in Nebraska.  He…
Read more