Penny Harter

I live in Mays Landing, NJ. My poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies, and my literary autobiography appears as an extended essay in Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 28 (1998) as well as in Contemporary Authors, Volume 172 (1999). A poem of mine was featured in American Life in Poetry, and journals such as Persimmon Tree, Rattle, Tattoo Highway, Tiferet, and Windhover have published my work. Recent poems appear in the anthologies Poetry of Presence, The Book of Donuts, Healing the Divide, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. My essays and poems also appear in the writing guides Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (Dos Gatos Press), The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, The Crafty Poet II, and The Practice of Poetry (Terrapin Books).

Among my twenty-some books and chapbooks, my most recent books include the forthcoming Still-Water Days (Kelsay Books 2021), A Prayer the Body Makes (Kelsay Books, 2020), The Resonance Around Us (Mountains & Rivers Press, 2013), One Bowl (Snapshot Press, 2012 ), Recycling Starlight (Mountains & Rivers Press,2010), and The Night Marsh (WordTech Editions, 2008). With my late husband William J. Higginson, I co-authored The Haiku Handbook (Kodansha America, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2010), and my children’s alphabestiary, The Beastie Book (Shenanigan Books, 2009).

I was a featured reader at the 2010 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and have won three poetry fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, awards from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Mary Carolyn Davies Award from the Poetry Society of America, the first William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award for my work in American Nature Writing, 2002, and two residencies from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

For more information and sample poems from my books, you may visit my new web site at: pennyharter poet.com. And for current and ongoing activities, readings, publication news, etc., please visit my Books page and Blog page on the same new website.