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).
Janet Ruth Heller’s poetry book, Folk Concert: Changing Times, was published by Anaphora Literary Press (2012). Folk Concert contains Heller’s best poems written from the 1970s to 2011. Folk Concert concerns the journey of becoming a woman during difficult times….
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From the emotionally engaging storyline to the beautiful illustrations, “How the Moon Regained Her Shape” was a delightful tale to share with my little ones. Janet Ruth Heller works magic with her storytelling skills, and Ben Hodson does a superb…
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The poems in Exodus are modern re-interpretations and psychological explorations of the people and events in the Bible. A central metaphor is the exodus from Egypt, which represents the journeys that people make: trying new experiences, leaving a bad relationship,…
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