Janet Ruth Heller

Janet Ruth Heller is a poet, literary critic, college professor, essayist, playwright, & fiction writer. I am a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature; I am currently president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago.

I published an award-winning fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 6th edn. 2018). How the Moon Regained Her Shape won a Book Sense Pick (2006), a Children's Choices selection (2007), a Benjamin Franklin Award (2007), & a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards (2007). This book was also one of 5 finalists for the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award (2009).

Fictive Press published my middle-grade fiction chapter book for children, The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015).

I have published 4 books of poetry: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora, 2012); Traffic Stop (Finishing Line, 2011).

I am a founding mother & former editor of Primavera, a literary magazine. Primavera  won awards from Chicago Women in Publishing & the Illinois Arts Council & grants from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines & the National Endowment for the Arts.

I have published a book of literary criticism, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, & the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990). My essay "A Visit to Isle Royale" was aired in 1999 over Michigan Public Radio. My creative nonfiction "Returning to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin" appeared in Midwestern Miscellany (2008). It is part of my memoir. 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.

My hobbies are hiking, singing, & bird watching. I love most sports.

How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale:  http://www.arbordalepublishing.com/bookpage.php?id=Moon