Harris, Jana 1947-

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HARRIS, Jana 1947-

PERSONAL: Born September 21, 1947, in San Francisco, CA; daughter of Richard H. (a meat packer) and Cicely Ann (Herman) Harris; married Mark Allen Bothwell (a biochemist), August 19, 1977. Education: University of Oregon—Eugene, B.S. (with honors), 1969; San Francisco State University, M.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES: Office—32814 120 St. SE, Sultan, WA 98294. Agent—Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency, 145 West 86th St., New York, NY 10024. E-mail—jnh@u. washington.edu.

CAREER: San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, instructor in poetry in the schools, 1972-78; Modesto Junior College, Modesto, CA, instructor in creative writing, 1975-78; City University of New York, New York, NY, instructor in creative writing, 1980—; Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, NY, acting director for writers-in-performance series, 1980-86; University of Washington, Seattle, instructor, 1986—. Founder and editor, Switched-on Gutenberg (Internet poetry journal). Co-coordinator of women-in-poetry program for Intersection, Inc., 1972-73; coordinator for Cody's Books "Poetry Reading" series, 1975-78; poet-in-residence for Alameda County Neighborhood Arts Program, 1977-78. Coproducer of "Planet on the Table," a literary program broadcast on KPFA-Radio, 1975-78, and "The Unheard of Hour," a literary interview program broadcast on KSAN-Radio, 1977. Educational mathematics consultant for Project SEED, Inc., at Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California—Berkeley, 1970-76. Appeared movie Festival of the Bards, 1978.

MEMBER: Poets and Writers, Associated Writing Programs, Feminist Writers' Guild, Poets and Writers of New Jersey, Pi Mu Epsilon.

AWARDS, HONORS: Berkeley Civic Arts Commission grant, 1974; New Jersey State Council on the Arts poetry fellowship, 1981; Manhattan As a Second Language and Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? Voices of Pioneer Women both received Pulitzer Prize nominations; Alaska was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, English-Speaking Union selection, and Books-across-the-Sea Program selection.

WRITINGS:

poetry

This House That Rocks with Every Truck on the Road, Jungle Garden (Fairfax, CA), 1976.

Pin Money, Jungle Garden (Fairfax, CA), 1977.

The Clackamas, The Smith, 1980.

Who's That Pushy Bitch?, Jungle Garden (Fairfax, CA), 1981.

Manhattan As a Second Language, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.

The Sourlands, Ontario Review Press (Princeton, NJ), 1989.

Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? Voices of Pioneer Women, Ontario Review Press (Princeton, NJ), 1993.

The Dust of Everyday Life: An Epic Poem of the Pacific Northwest, Sasquatch Books (Seattle, WA), 1997.

We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-90, Ontario Review Press (Princeton, NJ), 2003.

fiction

Alaska (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

The Pearl of Ruby City (mystery novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Also author of Running Scared: Early Poems, Spring Valley. Contributor to books, including This Is Women's Work, edited by Susan Efros, Panjandrum, 1974; Anthology of the First Annual Women's Poetry Festival of San Francisco, edited by Noni Noward, New World Press, 1977; City of Buds and Flowers: APoet's Eye View of Berkeley, edited by John Oliver Simon, Aldebaran Review, 1977; Nineteen Plus One: An Anthology of San Francisco Poetry, edited by A. D. Winans, Second Coming Press, 1978; Calafia: The California Poetry, edited by Ishmael Reed, Yardbird Publishing, 1979; Networks: An Anthology of Women Poets, edited by Carol Simone, Vortex, 1979; and Anthology of the City College of New York Poetry Festival, edited by Barry Wallenstein, City College of the City University of New York, 1979. Contributor of numerous poems, essays, short stories, and articles to periodicals, including Nation, Poetry Flash, Ms., Fiction West, Berkeley Poetry Review, and New Women's Times Feminist Review. Associate editor and cofounder, Poetry Flash, 1972-78; guest editor, Libera, 1973; coeditor, Feminist Writer's Guild National Newsletter, 1978.

ADAPTATIONS: Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? Voices of Pioneer Women is being adapted for television.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A sequel to The Pearl of Ruby City; a contemporary thriller novel; more poetry.

SIDELIGHTS: Poet and fiction writer Jana Harris has spent much of her life in rugged areas of Alaska and Oregon, where she developed a fascination for the stories of pioneer life in the western United States. In the past, she has worked on an Alaskan fishing boat, and she currently owns a farm in the Cascade Mountains. Coming to know the elderly residents of such towns as Sitka, Alaska, where she interviewed people in their eighties and older, Harris wanted to tell their stories. As she told Cathy Sova in a Mystery Reader interview, for example, she wrote her mystery novel, The Pearl of Ruby City, "because I live on a farm [and] I was interested in reading about a time when agrarian life was the norm, not an anomaly. In the beginning, what I was looking for was common ground. I've been formulating this theory, when America exited the family farm, following World War II, our nation lost its way and hasn't quite found it again."

In her first novel, Alaska, which is based on a collection of first-person interviews Harris obtained from longtime Alaska residents while she hitchhiked through the state in 1971, the author reproduced a history of Alaska from 1867 to the present, told from the perspective of succeeding generations of its women characters. Best Sellers critic Lucille Crane pronounced the novel "a fine study of a little-known subject and uniquely organized to tell a wonderful story." As with Alaska, Harris's poems also often take the form of narratives from the perspective of pioneer women. Her Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? Voices of Pioneer Women is based, as she told Sova, on "the real life reminiscences of women who lived near the silver mining camp of Ruby in the Okanogan Valley in central Washington state." This evolved into a collection of poetic monologues told in the voices of young and old pioneers. Although a Publishers Weekly critic found the poetry "technically uninspiring and the voices … not adequately differentiated," the reviewer still considered their stories to be "moving." Booklist reviewer Pat Monaghan praised the book for its "marvelous details" and "dramatic individual stories of women's lives on the frontier."

Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? evolved into Harris's second novel, The Pearl of Ruby City, which focuses on the life of a laundress living in the same locale as the characters in the earlier poetry collection. Pearl Ryan is a young woman of twenty-one who has fled a troubled past in New York City and settled in a small Washington town. Here, she saves money to go to medical school by working as a laundress and helping out the local doctor. When the town's mayor is murdered, Pearl is worried that investigations into the crime might reveal her past, and so she becomes an amateur sleuth to find the true criminal and protect her privacy. Some reviewers of this mystery novel enjoyed the colorful cast of characters and period details, while others felt they muddled the storyline. A Publishers Weekly critic observed that "too much period detail and too many characters" result in a plot that "never develops." On the other hand, Library Journal writer Rex E. Klett called The Pearl of Ruby City a "lively first novel," while Budd Arthur, commenting in Booklist, appreciated the "unmistakable lyricism" of the writing, which he attributed to Harris's background as a poet.

Harris has also published another collection of narrative poems, We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-90. This book again tells the story of life in America over a century ago, mostly from the viewpoint of women characters.

Harris once told CA: "I write to document my own reality. I sit at a desk eight to twelve hours a day writing. Because writing is often an isolating experience and an arduous task, I have several desks in different cities: Ringoes, New Jersey; New York City; and Berkeley, California. I find that changing my surroundings often changes the light on my subjects. When the area around one desk gets too dirty, I move to another desk, hoping that someone will clean up in my absence. I have never been afflicted with writer's block; I think that writer's block is a male affliction. I have never not been able to write. I have, however, been afraid; afraid that everything I write will be bad, afraid that I'll keep writing the same boring story or poem over and over, and afraid that some critic will call my characters trite."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Best Sellers, January, 1981, Lucille Crane, review of Alaska.

Booklist, October 15, 1977; October 15, 1993, Pat Monaghan, review of Oh How Can I Keep on Singing? Voices of Pioneer Women, p. 413; September 1, 1998, Budd Arthur, review of The Pearl of Ruby City, p. 70; March 1, 2003, Ray Olson, review of We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-90, p. 1141.

Library Journal, January 15, 1982, review of Manhattan As a Second Language, p. 181; December 1, 1982, Bill Katz, review of Quilt, p. 2240; October 1, 1993, Frank Allen, review of Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?, p. 98; October 1, 1998, Rex E. Klett, review of The Pearl of Ruby City, p. 138.

Ms., July, 1981, Mary Thom, review of Alaska, p. 26; September, 1982, Jane Bosveld, review of Manhattan As a Second Language, p. 94.

New York Times, November 16, 1980, Michael Malone, review of Alaska, p. 24.

People, November 29, 1993, Sara Nelson, review of Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?, p. 33.

Publishers Weekly, September 26, 1980, Barbara A. Bannon, review of Alaska, p. 116; December 18, 1981, Sally A. Lodge, review of Manhattan As a Second Language, p. 69; October 11, 1993, review of Oh How Can I Keep on Singing?, p. 82; August 10, 1998, review of The Pearl of Ruby City, p. 372.