Jo-Ann Mort

Jo-Ann Mort’s first book of poetry, published when she is 69 years old, is A Precise Chaos, published by Arrowsmith Press in May 2025.

Jo-Ann returned to writing poetry when she turned 60. Her poetry has appeared recently in Plume, UpStreet, Stand (UK), the Atlanta Review, the Women’s Review of Books, and elsewhere. A 1978 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she did graduate work in poetry and philosophy at NYU.

Her previous lives inform her poetry, as do her global wanderings—as a trade union activist, a political organizer, and a longtime advocate for, and writer about, peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Jo-Ann has written analysis and reported for more than 40 years from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), including the West Bank and Gaza her journalism is widely published in the US and UK. Jo-Ann is a member of the national steering committee of Writers for Democratic Action.

Born and raised in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, she is a longtime resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Jo-Ann is also  the editor of Divine-Human Encounter: The Path to God in the Thought of Abraham Joshua Heschelby Harold Kasimow (June 2024), co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? (2023), and editor of Not Your Father’s Union Movement (1998).