Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
Julia Spicher Kasdorf is the author of four books of poetry: Sleeping Preacher; Eve’s Striptease; Poetry in America; and Shale Play: Poems and Photographs From the Fracking Fields. Her awards include the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association award for new writers, a Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry.
Kasdorf has published a collection of essays, The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, and the biographical study Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American. With Joshua R. Brown she edited new editions of Yoder’s regional classic, Rosanna of the Amish, and Fred Lewis Pattee’s local- color romance, The House of the Black Ring. With Michael Tyrell she co-edited Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn. She is now working with Christopher Reed on the exhibition and catalogue Field Language: Paintings and Poetry by Warren and Jane Rohrer.
Kasdorf is professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State, where she teaches creative writing.