Host Profile

Jan Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody for the past eight years. Beatty’s new collection of poems, Boneshaker, was published in Spring 2002 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her first collection of poetry, Mad River, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published in 1995. Mad River was a finalist in The Great Lakes Colleges Association Award for New Writing. Beatty’s chapbook, Ravenous, won the 1995 State Street Chapbook Prize. She has worked as a welfare caseworker and an abortion counselor. She worked in maximum security prisons and was a waitress for fifteen years. Beatty won the 1990 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Individual poems have appeared in journals such as Indiana Review, Witness, and Poetry East. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies published by the University of Illinois Press, Kent State University Press, and the University of Iowa Press. Her work has earned writing fellowships at Ucross, Wyoming; Hedgebrook, Washington; and Leighton Studios at Banff, Alberta, Canada. She is the recipient of the Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the year 2000. She has read her work widely, at venues such as Sarah Lawrence College, Syracuse University, Reed College in Oregon, The Writer’s Voice in Detroit, Fresno State University in California, and the Pablo Neruda Awards in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has taught writing workshops across the country, and for the past ten years has held teaching positions at the University of Pittsburgh, Carlow College, and Carnegie Mellon University.