Fiction Writer, Poet, Playwright, Educator, Memoir Writer and Literary Critic
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).
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2017 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata (The Fallen Woman) broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances on August 25, 2017 features spectacular singers. Sonya Yoncheva as Violetta Valéry, Michael Fabiano as her lover Alfredo Germont, and Thomas Hampson…
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Chelsea Leigh Trescott interviewed me about moving past heartbreak in relationships to focus reviewing one’s goals and on improving one’s life.
A new article by Sandra Beckwith about how to market books includes advice from Janet Ruth Heller. I urge people to “Do personal appearances and promote them. Libraries, schools, conferences, and bookstores often sponsor readings, panels, workshops, and book fairs…
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