Teachers & Writers Collaborative

Joanna Fuhrman

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of three collections of poetry published by Hanging Loose Press, Freud in Brooklyn (2000), Ugh Ugh Ocean (2003), and Moraine (2006.) Her work has been widely reviewed and quoted in many publications including the Believer and the New York Times. David Lehman in the Wall Street Journal called Freud in Brooklyn “an impressive first collection,” and Publishers Weekly urged, “Don’t miss this one.” Her books have been taught in poetry classes at the University of Louisiana, the University of Arizona, and Sarah Lawrence College, and she has read her work at colleges, literary centers, bookstores, and galleries across the country. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Lit, New American Writing, Fence, New York Quarterly, Conduit, and American Letters and Commentary, and in anthologies published by Soft Skull Press, HarperCollins, New York University and Carnegie Mellon University. She recently finished a young adult novel called Still Life with Liver, and has an essay in Burning Interiors: The Poetry and Poetics of David Shapiro (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Her reflections on teaching poetry to architecture students appeared in the spring 2007 issue of Teachers & Writers magazine. She has also written short plays that were produced at La MaMa and the Bleeker Street Theater. From 2001-2003, she ran the Monday night reading series at the Poetry Project at Saint Marks Church where she organized theater and film events.

Joanna has been teaching for more than a decade. She has taught creative writing at the University of Washington, Rutgers University, the Cooper Union Saturday Outreach Program, William Patterson’s Writers Conference, and the Poetry Project at Saint Mark’s Church, as well as through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, LEAP, the Waterways project, Poets House, and the College English Preparation Program. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program, which awarded her the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Joan Grayson Award. She loves teaching creative writing and visual art to students of all ages and levels, and has developed curricula that integrate creative writing with visual art and global history. She is currently working on her fourth book of poetry.