Jan Beatty’s latest book, Red Sugar, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press and was a finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize. Other books include Boneshaker (U. of Pgh. Press, 2002), finalist for the Milton Kessler Award, Mad River, winner of the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and a limited edition chapbook, Ravenous, winner of the 1995 State Street Prize. Beatty’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Court Green, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, and University of Iowa Press. Awards include the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Heinz Foundation, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Beatty has read her work widely, at venues such as the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival. For the past eighteen years, she has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WYEP-FM featuring the work of national writers. Beatty directs the creative writing program at Carlow University, where she runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops and teaches in the MFA program.

Photo by Ruth E. Hendricks