Heather H. Thomas

Heather H. Thomas has published nine collections of poetry, including Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018), Blue Ruby (FootHills Publishing, 2008), Resurrection Papers (Chax Press, 2003), and Practicing Amnesia (Singing Horse Press, 2000), twice a National Poetry Series finalist. Alice Notley called Blue Ruby "a beauty, composed by a fearlessly compassionate intelligence." Thomas's three chapbooks include an embroidery art and poetry collaboration, The Fray, with artist Barbara Schulman. She has two bilingual Spanish-English editions, with Argentine poet and translator Patricia Diaz Bialet.

Thomas's poems are anthologized in 23 volumes, including Keystone Poets Anthology (Penn State University Press, 2025); Shining Rock Poetry Anthology (2022), Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest (Stockton University, 2021); Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate for Social Justice (Michigan State University Press, 2019); and Birdsong: In Celebration of Birds (FootHills Publishing, 2017).  

Among the fifty print and online journals that have published Thomas's work are Barrow Street; Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts; Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America; About Place Journal; Barrow Street; Cardinal Points; Interim; The Wallace Stevens Journal; Stillwater Review; and Women's Studies Quarterly. She is also published as H.T. Harrison, most recently in the Pedestal (2023) and Persimmon Tree (2022).

Her poems are translated and published in Albanian, Arabic, Italian, Lithuanian, Spanish, and Swedish. She has read in Argentina, Bosnia, Egypt, Ireland, Kosovo, Lithuania, Macedonia, Russia, Sweden, and Turkey. Thomas is a co-founding editor of the poetry journal 6ix, which she co-edited for a decade with five Philadelphia poets. She edited a folio of international women poets for Persimmon Tree.

Her scholarly work is on Alice Notley, Anne Waldman, Emily Dickinson, H.D., and Wallace Stevens, including publication in the volumes We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women's Writing and Performance Poetics; Approaches to Teaching H.D.'s Poetry and Prose; and The Emily Dickinson Journal. After more than a decade in journalism, she pivoted to teaching literature and creative writing. She was Professor of English for 25 years at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where she won the Outstanding Faculty  Award. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Pennsylvania; her M.A. and Ph.D. are from Temple University.