Joan Larkin
Encyclopedia
Joan Larkin is an American
poet
and playwright
. She was active in the small press
lesbian
feminist publishing explosion in the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. She is now in her fourth decade of teaching writing. Her brother is the science fiction
writer Donald Moffitt
.
at Swarthmore College
, a Master of Arts
in English at the University of Arizona
, and a Master of Fine Arts
in playwriting at Brooklyn College
.
Larkin has served on the faculties of Brooklyn College
, Sarah Lawrence College
, and Goddard College
, and as Distinguished Visiting Poet at Columbia College Chicago
. She is a member of the core faculty of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Poetry Writing at Drew University
.
's Love Poems (translated with Jaime Manrique
), and Cold River.
Her writing includes The Hole in the Sheet, a Klezmer
musical farce, and two books of daily meditations in the Hazelden
recovery series: If You Want What We Have and Glad Day. The Living, her verse play about AIDS
, has been produced at festivals in Boston and New York.
's 2011 Shelley Memorial Award
. Poet Rigoberto Gonzalez
is co-recipient of the award. She has also received the Publishing Triangle's 2008 Audre Lorde
Award for Lesbian Poetry, for her book My Body: New and Selected Poems. In addition, Joan Larkin has received the Lambda Literary Award
for poetry twice, in 1988 (for Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, with Carl Morse) and in 1997 (for Cold River). In the 1970s, she co-founded the independent small press
Out & Out Books and co-edited the anthologies Amazon Poetry and Lesbian Poetry (with Elly Bulkin). Her anthology of coming out
stories, A Woman Like That, was nominated for a Publishing Triangle award and a Lambda Literary Award
for nonfiction in 2000. She served as poetry editor for the first three years of the queer
literary journal Bloom. She is co-editor, with David Bergman
, of the Living Out autobiography series at the University of Wisconsin Press
. In addition to Larkin's Lambda Literary Award
s, her awards include fellowships in poetry and playwriting from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New York Foundation for the Arts
, and the National Endowment for the Arts
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
. She was active in the small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
feminist publishing explosion in the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. She is now in her fourth decade of teaching writing. Her brother is the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer Donald Moffitt
Donald Moffitt
Donald Moffitt is an author of a number of science fiction novels. Most famous among these are The Genesis Quest and Second Genesis.-Novels:*The Jupiter Theft *The Genesis Quest...
.
Biography
Joan Larkin earned a Bachelor of ArtsBachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
at Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
, a Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in English at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, and a Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
in playwriting at Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
.
Larkin has served on the faculties of Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
, and Goddard College
Goddard College
Goddard College is a private, liberal arts college located in Plainfield, Vermont, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Goddard College currently operates on an intensive low-residency model...
, and as Distinguished Visiting Poet at Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...
. She is a member of the core faculty of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Poetry Writing at Drew University
Drew University
Drew University is a private university located in Madison, New Jersey.Originally established as the Drew Theological Seminary in 1867, the university later expanded to include an undergraduate liberal arts college in 1928 and commenced a program of graduate studies in 1955...
.
Works and themes
Joan Larkin's most recent poetry collection is My Body: New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2007). Previous books of poetry include Housework, A Long Sound, Sor JuanaSor Juana
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , fully Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, was a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and nun of New Spain...
's Love Poems (translated with Jaime Manrique
Jaime Manrique
-Background:Manrique was born in Barranquilla, Colombia and earned a B.A. from the University of South Florida.-Writing career:His first poetry volume won Colombia's National Poetry Award. Additionally, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write his memoirs and has contributed to Shade , a gay,...
), and Cold River.
Her writing includes The Hole in the Sheet, a Klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
musical farce, and two books of daily meditations in the Hazelden
Hazelden
The Hazelden Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Center City, Minnesota. Hazelden has alcohol and drug treatment facilities in Minnesota ; Newberg, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; Naples, Florida and New York City, New York...
recovery series: If You Want What We Have and Glad Day. The Living, her verse play about AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, has been produced at festivals in Boston and New York.
Literary prizes
Larkin is the 2011 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She has also received the Poetry Society of AmericaPoetry Society of America
The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists including Witter Bynner. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent...
's 2011 Shelley Memorial Award
Shelley Memorial Award
The Shelley Memorial Award of more than $3,500, given out by the Poetry Society of America, was established by the will of the late Mary P. Sears, and named after the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The prize is given to a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need. The selection is...
. Poet Rigoberto Gonzalez
Rigoberto González
Rigoberto González is an American writer and book critic. He is an editor and author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual children's books, and self-identifies in his writing as a gay Chicano...
is co-recipient of the award. She has also received the Publishing Triangle's 2008 Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
Award for Lesbian Poetry, for her book My Body: New and Selected Poems. In addition, Joan Larkin has received the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
for poetry twice, in 1988 (for Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, with Carl Morse) and in 1997 (for Cold River). In the 1970s, she co-founded the independent small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
Out & Out Books and co-edited the anthologies Amazon Poetry and Lesbian Poetry (with Elly Bulkin). Her anthology of coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
stories, A Woman Like That, was nominated for a Publishing Triangle award and a Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
for nonfiction in 2000. She served as poetry editor for the first three years of the queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
literary journal Bloom. She is co-editor, with David Bergman
David Bergman
David Bergman is an American writer and English professor at Towson University. He was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts , grew up in Laurelton, New York, and graduated from Kenyon College and earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University ....
, of the Living Out autobiography series at the University of Wisconsin Press
University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It primarily publishes work by scholars from the global academic community but also serves the citizens of Wisconsin by publishing important books about Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest, and...
. In addition to Larkin's Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
s, her awards include fellowships in poetry and playwriting from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
, and the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
.
Poetry
- Housework (Out & Out Books, 1975) ISBN 091831402X
- A Long Sound (Granite Press, 1986) ISBN 0961488611
- Cold River (Painted Leaf Press, 1997) ISBN 0965155854
- Sor Juana's Love Poems/ Poemas de Amor (in Spanish and English, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Joan Larkin, Jaime ManriqueJaime Manrique-Background:Manrique was born in Barranquilla, Colombia and earned a B.A. from the University of South Florida.-Writing career:His first poetry volume won Colombia's National Poetry Award. Additionally, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write his memoirs and has contributed to Shade , a gay,...
; Painted Leaf Press, 1997, ISBN 0965155862, reprinted, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) ISBN 0299187047
- My Body: New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2007) ISBN 9781931236744
Prose
- If You Want What We Have: Sponsorship Meditations (Hazelden, 1998) ISBN 9781568381923
- Glad Day: Daily Meditations for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender People (Hazelden, 1998) ISBN 9781568381893
Collections Edited
- Amazon Poetry: An Anthology (with Elly Bulkin, Out & Out Books, 1975) ISBN 0918314070
- Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology (with Elly Bulkin, Persephone Press, 1980) ISBN 0930436083
- Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: An Anthology (with Carl Morse, St. Martin's Press, 1988) ISBN 0312022131
- A Woman Like That: Lesbian and Bisexual Writers Tell their Coming Out Stories (Avon/Bard Books, 1999) ISBN 9780380802470
Recordings
- A Sign I Was Not Alone (LP recording of poets Adrienne RichAdrienne RichAdrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
, Honor MooreHonor MooreHonor Moore is an American writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and plays.She is the author of three collections of poems: Red Shoes, Darling, and Memoir; two works of nonfiction, The White Blackbird and The Bishop's Daughter; and the play Mourning Pictures, which was produced on Broadway and...
, Audre Lorde, Joan Larkin, New York: Out & Out Books, 1980)
Limited Editions
- ‘’A Garden,’’ letterpress broadside (Center for Book Arts, NYC, 2005)
- ‘’Waste Not,’’ letterpress broadside (Bridge Press, Vermont, 2005)
- ‘’Boston Piano,’’ Belladonna limited edition poetry chapbook, June 2003
- ‘’Hard Differences,’’ letterpress broadside, American Populist Poetry Series, 1980
Plays: Staged Readings, Productions
- The AIDS Passion, staged reading, Mt. Holyoke College, April 1995
- The Living, staged reading, Huntington Theater Company, Boston, December 1996; full production, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, June 2000
- The Hole in the Sheet, book and lyrics for a klezmerKlezmerKlezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
musical farce, music by Steve Elson (currently seeking production) - Wiretap, Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater, NYC, December 2001, staged reading by Brooklyn College Theater Department
- Brother Dust, a hip-hop version of SophoclesSophoclesSophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' AntigoneAntigone (Sophocles)Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
(currently seeking production)
External links
- Joan Larkin's website
- Joan Larkin's blog
- "Photo", poem by Larkin, thethepoetry.com
- Publishing Triangle Award winners, 2008
- LAMBDA Literary Award winners, 1988
- LAMBDA Literary Award winners, 1997
- The Academy of American Poets: My Body
- The Academy of American Poets: Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time
- Columbia College Chicago
- Tarpaulin Sky
- Article in POZ magazine, November 2006
- Isle of Lesbos website, biographies of popular contemporary lesbian poets
- Hanging Loose Press
- HarperCollins Publishers
- University of Wisconsin Press