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Poems in the anthology Covenant of Justice

My poems “A Woman Prophet” and “The Bond of Gratitude” just appeared in the anthology Covenant of Justice: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations from Women of Reform Judaism, Boston: Women of Reform Judaism and the CCAR Press, 2025 on pages 4 and 96. This collection features writing by many women. The book is unusual in not putting authors’ names next to their poems and not including any biographical statements or even listing authors’ websites. While I like the idea of a collective women’s anthology, I also believe that writers’ individual voices are important too.

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Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Diane Joy Schmidt

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Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).