Janice N. Harrington

Janice N. Harrington is an American poet and children's writer.

Life

She grew up in Alabama and Nebraska.

She worked as a public librarian in Champaign, Illinois, and as a professional storyteller, appearing at the National Storytelling Festival.^[1] She now teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[2]

Her work appears in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review,^[3] Beloit Poetry Journal, Harvard Review, Indiana Review,^[4] Field,^[5] Prairie Schooner,^[6] Southern Review,^[7] and other journals.

Selected Awards

• 2008 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, for Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone^[8]
• A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize
• 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry
• 2007 TIME Magazine's top 10 children's books
• 2007 Cybils Award for the year’s best fiction picture book: "the children’s and YA bloggers’ literary awards"^[9]
• 2005 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, for Going North^[10][11]
• Illinois Arts Council Literary Award^[12]

Works

Poetry

• The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2011. ISBN 978-1-934414-54-5.
• Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2007. ISBN 978-1-929918-89-8.
• "They All Sang". Harvard Review (28). 2005.
• "Shaking the Grass", Verse Daily

Children's

• Busy-Busy Little Chick. Illustrator Brian Pinkney. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2013. ISBN 978-0-374-34746-8.
• Roberto Walks Home. Illustrator Jody Wheeler. Viking Penguin. 2008. ISBN 978-0-670-06316-1.
• The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County. Illustrator Shelley Jackson. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2007. ISBN 978-0-374-31251-0.
• Going North. Illustrator Jerome Lagarrigue. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2004. ISBN 978-0-374-32681-4.

Notes

Janice N. Harrington’s Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone also dwells in place, and it creates its world with an authorial I even more effaced than Baker’s. The place is the American south in the mid-20th century, and before we meet its people we learn, from Harrington’s intense, cadence-driven lines, that we will be reading a poetry that calls out and sings to the world. The propulsive Alexandrine opening couplet of The Thief’s Tabernacle, which begins the collection, marks Harrington as the most rhythmically driven of these three poets...^[13]

References

1. Could Not Find – Authors. BOA Editions. Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
2. Janice N. Harrington Profile, Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. English.illinois.edu. Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
3. Spring & Summer 2003. Uaa.alaska.edu (2009-06-17). Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
4. Indiana Review. Indiana Review. Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
5. Oberlin College Press. Oberlin.edu. Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
6. UNL | Prairie Schooner | Archives | Fall 2004. Prairieschooner.unl.edu (2009-07-23). Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
7. Harrington, Janice N. (2004). "Dechirage". The Southern Review.
8. Tufts Poetry Awards 2008 Page 2. Cgu.edu (2008-04-15). Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
9. Cybils: The 2007 Cybils winners. Dadtalk.typepad.com (2008-02-14). Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
10. Retrieved on 2012-12-04.
11. Children's book award handbook – Google Books. Books.google.com. Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
12. Ninth Letter Arts & Literary Journal. Ninthletter.com. Retrieved on 2010-12-01.
13. Steve Wingate (2009-01-01). "Three New Poets I Met at Bread Loaf". Gently Read Lit.

External links

• Official website
• "Featured Illinois Poet", selected by the Illinois Poet Laureate
• Janice N. Harrington at Library of Congress Authorities, with 6 catalog records