Julia Kasdorf

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Julia Kasdorf (born December 6, 1962) is an American poet.

Born Julia Spicher in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, she grew up in the suburbs southeast of Pittsburgh near Irwin, Westmoreland County.[1] Her parents were Mennonites who chose to leave their rural community in central Pennsylvania for the city.

Her first published poem appeared in 1977 in Images Remembered II, an anthology of the Poets in the Schools program.[2] 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 in 1980.[3] She attended Goshen College for several years. In 1981 she won the Scholastic Writing Awards with work that was then published in Literary Cavalcade. While at Goshen she also had poems published in With, Builder, Christian Living, and the college magazines Record and Broadside.

Spicher visited China 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 of poetry inspired by her Chinese experiences.[4] She earned her B.A., M.A. in creative writing, and Ph.D. from New York University[5], where she studied with poet Yehuda Amichai, among others.

An associate professor of English and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University, she was formerly married to the artist and teacher David M. Kasdorf. They have a daughter.

Kasdorf introduced a collection of works by members of a Mennonite church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, (Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster) describing the church as "the divorce church [because] it's a place where you can still worship with Mennonites after a divorce." "These days I suppose CMCL could also be called 'the liberal church' or 'the artists' church' and probably a few other things I don't know about.Of course CMCL could have compiled and sold a fine collection of recipes, but the world is probably not in desperate need of more cookbooks from this region. Defying stereotypes fueled by the local market's insatiable hunger for shoofly and quilts, this book contains brave attempts to name and portray what Shakespeare called the 'aery nothing'—those feelings and thoughts that seem too vague or dark to express."[6]

Contents

[edit] Awards and recognition

Kasdorf won the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for her first book Sleeping Preacher. She has since won the 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 (poetry) (2004).[7]


[edit] Works

Kasdorf's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and several anthologies.[8]

In 1997, she had a poem published in West Branch, a Bucknell University based literary journal founded in 1977. The magazine features mainly poetry and fiction, plus prose, graphic art, photography and the occasional review or critical piece.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Moss Lotus, poetry chapbook (Atlanta: Pinchpenny Press, 1983) published under name of Julia Spicher. Illustrated by Suelyn Lee
  • Sleeping Preacher, poetry (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992) ISBN 0-8229-5480-X
  • Contribution to Karl Patten and Robert Taylor (eds.) West Branch 41 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University, 1997). Trade ISSN 0149-6441
  • Eve's Striptease, poetry (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) ISBN 0-8229-5668-3
  • The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, essays and poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) ISBN 0-8018-6662-6
  • Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American, biography (Telford: Pandora Press, 2003) ISBN 1-931038-06-6

[edit] Forthcoming

  • Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, poetry anthology, Michael Tyrell, coeditor (New York: NYU Press, 2007)

[edit] References

Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2004. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000111881

  1. ^ Julia Spicher, Moss Lotus (Atlanta: Pinchpenny Press, 1983)
  2. ^ Julia Spicher, Moss Lotus (Atlanta: Pinchpenny Press, 1983)
  3. ^ Julia Spicher, Moss Lotus (Atlanta: Pinchpenny Press, 1983)
  4. ^ Julia Spicher, Moss Lotus (Atlanta: Pinchpenny Press, 1983)
  5. ^ 'Julia Spicher Kasdorf', Penn State: The Department of English (2005). Retrieved August 30 2006.
  6. ^ Julia Spicher Kasdorf et al, The Gathering: Words and Art of Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Parrot Press, 1999)
  7. ^ 'Julia Spicher Kasdorf', Penn State: The Department of English (2005). Retrieved August 30 2006.
  8. ^ 'Julia Spicher Kasdorf', Penn State: The Department of English (2005). Retrieved August 30 2006.
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