Manuscript Consultation/Poetry Tutorials
Jan Beatty has worked with many private students on their poetry manuscripts. She has also worked with students one-on-one in classroom settings to develop their poetry. Over twenty of her students have had full-length books published with presses such as Four Way Books, Autumn House Press, the University of Pittsburgh Press, Main Street Rag, FootHills Publishing, Tebot Bach, and chapbooks published with Slipstream, Parallel Press, and Finishing Line Press.
Jan Beatty has taught poetry for over twenty years at the university level-most recently at Carlow University, where she is Director of Creative Writing, runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops, and teaches in the low-residency MFA program. She has also been a Visiting Assistant Professor and Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Beatty has toured extensively with her work, reading at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival, and at venues such as the Split This Rock Festival in Washington, D.C., the KGB Bar and St. Mark's Theater in New York, Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, and Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley, CA. As a guest craft lecturer, Beatty has visited universities around the country, such as Reed College, Oregon; Kent State University; Sarah Lawrence College; Columbia College, Chicago; University of Vermont; University of Nebraska; SUNY Binghamton; Florida International University; University of the Pacific; Fresno State University; and many others. Beatty's work has been featured on Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's weekly column, American Life in Poetry, and on Writer's Almanac, National Public Radio by Garrison Keillor.
Jan Beatty is the author of three books of poetry, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Most recently, Red Sugar was named a finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize. Boneshaker (2002) was a finalist for the Milton Kessler Award, and Mad River won the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Ravenous, her limited edition chapbook, won the 1995 State Street Prize. Beatty was a finalist for the Discovery/The Nation Prize in 1989. Beatty's poetry has appeared widely in journals such as Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, TriQuarterly, and Court Green, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press, Houghton Mifflin, University of Illinois Press, University of Iowa Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Kent State University Press, and Autumn House 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. For the past eighteen years, Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WYEP-FM featuring the work of national and international writers. Beatty has been awarded writing fellowships from residencies across the continent,including the MacDowell Colony; Santa Fe Arts Institute; Ragdale; Ucross; Leighton Studios, Banff, Alberta; Hedgebrook; Jentel, Montana Arts Refuge, and others.
Jan Beatty has served as Senior Editor for Voices from the Attic, an anthology of women poets, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, Carlow University Press. She is also the founder and Senior Editor of MadBooks, a small press that publishes books of poetry by women. MadBooks has published two full-length books: Burying the Body, Christina Murdock, and Steam Rising, Anita Byerly, and four chapbooks since its inception in 2008. Since 2002, Beatty has edited Chapter & Verse, a bi-weekly feature in City Paper featuring the poetry of local writers. She has served as Judge for the 2011 Public Poetry Project through the Pennsylvania Center for the Book. She also judged the national 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Contest and the 2009 Liam Rector Book Prize. Beatty has read manuscripts as a Juror for Ragdale Artist Residency in 2006, 2007 and as a Screener for the Wick Poetry Prize through Kent State University Press, 2004. Beatty is a member of Associated Writing Programs, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and PEN Writers.
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Manuscript consultation is available for full-length poetry manuscripts and chapbook manuscripts. Private poetry tutorials are also available for work with a group of individual poems.
An extensive manuscript consultation would offer you an initial assessment, a reimagining and reordering of your full-length or chapbook manuscript (with poems added and deleted), extensive line editing on poems, a written response to your work including where you might consider sending it, plus suggestions for possible journal publication, and a follow-up phone consultation to discuss the new manuscript.
A private poetry tutorial would offer you an initial assessment, written comments on a group of your poems (including line editing if needed), a written response to your work including suggestions for possible journal publication, plus a follow-up phone conversation to discuss your writing.
If you are interested in further details on manuscript consultation or a poetry tutorial, please contact Jan at info@janbeatty.com
A fee of $50 for an initial assessment will involve Jan studying your writing sample and the viability of your work together. If you continue to the project phase of consultation or tutorial, that money will be applied towards the total project fee.
Jan maintains a waiting list of students in order to manage teaching, writing, and consultation work. Please contact her in advance to schedule your work together.
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Testimonials from students:
Jan Beatty mentored me through the process of creating the manuscript that would become my first book. I don't know how long I would've waited to put it together if it hadn't been for Jan, who believed and convinced me that somewhere in my pile of poems were the seeds of a book. Her belief in me and in my poems was the current that energized the project. Her guidance was invaluable. She was able to quickly recognize which poems would be important to the book-most of which still needed work-and which didn't belong. She was a careful and honest editor of individual poems. I trusted her editing and criticism because her own poems spoke for her poetic sensibility; because she did not offer gratuitous praise; and because her criticism and suggestions honored and furthered the intention of the poems. She taught me how to think about organizing the book, including sections, epigraphs and title. When the manuscript was ready, she suggested publishers and contests and continued to encourage me to send it out even as I continued revising. She encouraged me every step of the way. I highly recommend Jan Beatty as a mentor to anyone beginning or engaged in the creation of a poetry manuscript. -Lori Wilson
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LORI WILSON is the author of House Where a Woman (Autumn House Press, 2009).Her poems have appeared on the Poetry Daily website and in various literary journals, including Southern Poetry Review, Georgetown Review, Kestrel, Cerise and 5 AM. She is a student in the MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation at Drew University. |
In 2001, I began writing poetry, not just for myself, but with an eye to a wider audience, and I studied with several prominent poets in Pittsburgh and Southern California.Ê It was then my extraordinary good fortune to study independently over several years with Jan Beatty, and she became, and remains, far and away, the greatest influence on my poetic life. By sharing her insights and suggestions on individual poems-and later, in the shaping of my first full-length manuscript- Jan helped me move to a range and depth of poetic expression IÊdon't think I could have otherwise attained.ÊIn 2007, I won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize from Prism International for my poem, ÒSleepers.Ó ÊIn 2008, my first book of poetry, The Almost Sound of Drowning, was published by Main Street Rag. Jan deeply and sensitively understands and respects the vision of the poets she works with, and is able, in a truly remarkable way, to help them move to the next level-and the next. Jan's influence on my poetry has been transformational. I cannot thank her enough. -Joan E. Bauer
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JOAN E. BAUER is the author of The Almost Sound of Drowning, published by Main Street Rag in 2008. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, Poet Lore, 5AM, and Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poetry. Her chapbook, Another Country, was published by Pudding House Press in 2008. She is the associate editor of Only the Sea Keeps:Poetry of the Tsunami (Bayeux Arts, 2005) |
