Communication
Two oak trees toss their heads in the breeze. Though they stand eleven feet apart, their branches sometimes intermingle.
One man and one woman listen to a quartet over the FM station. They sit in red chairs across the room from each other, but every few minutes, their eyes meet.
Janet Ruth Heller is the past president of the Michigan College English Association and the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. She has a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. She has published four poetry books: Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011); a scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990); a middle-grade fiction chapter book for children, The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015, 2016); and a fiction picture book for children about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edition 2022), that has won four national awards, including a Children’s Choices award. Her website is https://www.janetruthheller.com
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).
My fiction picture book for children about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape, won a Book Sense Pick (2006), a Benjamin Franklin Award (2007), a Children’s Choices award (2007), and a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards (2007). In 2009, How the Moon Regained Her Shape was also one of five finalists for the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award given by the Oregon Reading Association.
I have taught literature, women’s studies, composition, and creative writing at Michigan State University, Northern Illinois University, Nazareth College, Western Michigan University, Albion College, Grand Valley State University, Olivet College, and the University of Chicago.
I am a founding mother of the Rape Crisis Center in Madison, Wisconsin. I also co-founded the Professional Instructors Organization union at Western Michigan University. I served on the women’s advisory board for the public television station WGVU in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am a past president of the Ladies’ Library Association in Kalamazoo, a charitable nonprofit organization devoted to literacy, education, the arts, and culture.