Judith Tannenbaum
Judith Tannenbaum (born February 13, 1947) is an American teaching artist and writer. Born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles, she has worked in the field of community-based arts, sharing poetry in a wide variety of settings from primary school classrooms to maximum security prisons. She has received grants from the California Arts Council and has written for journals including PMLA and Teaching Artist Journal.
Books and Work
Among Tannenbaum’s books are the memoir, Disguised as a Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin (Northeastern University Press, 2000) -- a finalist in PEN American Center USA West’s Literary Award Winners in 2001; two books for teachers – Teeth, Wiggly as Earthquakes: Writing Poetry in the Primary Grades (Stenhouse Publishers, 2000) and (with Valerie Chow Bush) Jump Write In! Creative Writing Exercises for Diverse Communities, Grades 6-12 (Jossey-Bass, 2005); and six poetry collections. Her By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives — co-written with Spoon Jackson, her student at San Quentin in the 1980s — was published by New Village Press in March 2010.
In California, Tannenbaum created Arts-in-Corrections’ newsletter, wrote their book-length Manual for Artists Working in Prison, and developed the Handbook for Arts in the Youth Authority Program at the California Division of Juvenile Justice. She has also completed a feasibility study for arts programming in Minnesota state prisons; chaired panels and served as keynote speaker at conferences on prison, prison arts, and teaching arts; and taught in prisons in eight states.
Tannenbaum currently serves as training coordinator for WritersCorps in San Francisco.