Life

Julia Spicher Kasdorf is the author of three poetry collections--Sleeping Preacher (1992), Eve's Striptease (1998), and Poetry in America (2011)--all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Sleeping Preacher won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the Great Lakes College’s Association Award for New Writing, and Eve's Striptease was named one of the top 20 poetry books of 1998 by Library Journal. She also co-edited an anthology, Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, with Michael Tyrell (New York University Press, 2007). Kasdorf was awarded a 2009 NEA fellowship for poetry and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She is also the author of a scholarly study of Pennsylvania writer Joseph W. Yoder, Fixing Tradition, and co-editor of two editions of Pennsylvania local color novels, Rosanna of the Amish by Joseph W. Yoder and The House of the Black Ring by Fred Lewis Pattee. Her essay collection, The Body and the Book: Writing a Mennonite Life, was awarded the Book of the Year award by the Conference on Christianity and Literature. She is Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

In The Body and the Book, Spicher Kasdorf explores the cultural and geographical inspiration for her writing in the Mennonite and Amish communities of her origin as well as in the New York City where she studied creative writing and published her first book. In her essay, "A Place to Begin," she comments, "I liked being able to think in the free space between places . . . As poetry's power often comes from linking two unlike things to release new insight, so my life has been charged by the experience of embodying a connection between disparate locations" (p. 8).

Born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania

Lewistown, Pennsylvania

Lewistown is a borough in and the county seat of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, United States. It lies along the Juniata River, northwest of Harrisburg. The number of people living in the borough in 1900 was 4,451; in 1910, 8,166; and in 1940, 13,017. The population was 8,998 at the 2000 census,...

, Julia Spicher grew up in the suburbs southeast of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 near Irwin

Irwin, Pennsylvania

Irwin is a borough in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh. Some of the most extensive bituminous coal deposits in the State are located here. In the past, iron foundries, flour mills, car shops, facing and planing mills, electrical goods, and mirror factories provided...

, Westmoreland County

Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 369,993 people, 149,813 households, and 104,569 families residing in the county. The population density was 361 people per square mile . There were 161,058 housing units at an average density of 157 per square mile...

. Her parents were Mennonite

Mennonite

The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after the Frisian Menno Simons , who, through his writings, articulated and thereby formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders...

s born in Big Valley, Pennsylvania who chose to leave their rural community in central Pennsylvania for work in a city. Spicher attended Goshen College, in Goshen, Indiana, but completed her B.A. and PH.D. at New York University. As a student at Goshen College, Spicher visited China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 for the autumn of 1982 to do her Study-Service Trimester at Sichuan Teachers College and as a sophomore English major at Goshen in 1983 she published Moss Lotus, a chapbook

Chapbook

A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...

 of poetry inspired by her Chinese experiences. She earned her B.A.

Bachelor 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...

, M.A.

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 creative writing, and Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 from New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 (1997), where she studied with poet Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew....

, among others. Her Ph.D. dissertation, Fixing tradition: The cultural work of Joseph W. Yoder and his relationship with the Amish community of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, was supervised by Gordon M. Pradl.

Spicher Kasdorf began to write poetry seriously during her high school years and credits the Poets in the Schools program for nurturing her interest in writing. Her first published poem appeared in 1977 in Images Remembered II, an anthology of the Poets in the Schools program. Two years later she wrote in workshops at Summer Happening '79 and under Deborah Burnham and H. L. Van Brunt at Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts

Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts

The Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts was one of the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence, a group of five-week summer academies for gifted high school students in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The school was hosted each summer by Mercyhurst College...

 in 1980. In 1981 she won the Scholastic Writing Awards with work that was then published in Literary Cavalcade. While a student at Goshen College she also had poems published in With, Builder, Christian Living, and the college magazines Record and Broadside.

Awards and recognition

Kasdorf won the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize

The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize is a major American literary award for a first full-length book of poetry in the English language.This prize of the University of Pittsburgh Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA was initiated by Ed Ochester and developed by Frederick A. Hetzel. The prize is...

 for her first book Sleeping Preacher. She has since won the Great Lakes Colleges Award for New Writing (1993), Book of the Year Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature (2001), and the Pushcart Prize

Pushcart Prize

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....

 (poetry) (2004). She was awarded an NEA Grant for Poetry in 2009.

Works

Poetry

• Sleeping Preacher, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.
• Eve's Striptease, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.
• Poetry in America, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2011.

• with Michael Tyrell, eds. "Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn." NYU Press, 1007.

Kasdorf's poems have appeared in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, The Paris Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies.

Essays

• The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life. rpt. University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 2009.

Other works include:

• Moss Lotus, poetry chapbook (Atlanta: Pinchpenny Press, 1983) published under name of Julia Spicher. Illustrated by Suelyn Lee

• Rosanna of the Amish by Joseph W. Yoder, Joshua R. Brown, co-editor (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2008)

External links

• "Fine: On Maternity and Mortality" by Julia Kasdorf in Literary Mama.
• "Julia Spicher Kasdorf" author web page at Penn State University.
• "The Writer's Almanac" poems by Julia Spicher Kasdorf