Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing

by Judith Harris

In a collection of essays, some previous published, Harris (English, George Washington U.) looks at the writing process and at writers who have used literary expression to signify their pain and thereby found a better way to construct and heal themselves. She argues that writing involves the whole p

Genres: Writing

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Judith Harris was born in Washington, D.C. and received a B.A. from University of Maryland, her M.A. from Brown University in Creative Writing, and a Ph.D. from George Washington University in American literature. She has taught at George Washington, Catholic University, George Mason University, and American University, and held residencies at VCCA and Frost Place.

In 2000, LSU Press published Atonement , and LSU published her second book, The Bad Secret, in 2006. Her third collection of poetry, Night Garden, was published April 2013 by Tiger Bark Press, a literary press founded by Steven Huff, previously the executive director of BOA Editions. Her renowned critical book, Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing was published by SUNY Press and is taught in many graduate seminars. Her essays been published and in many journals and anthologies including Tikkun, College English, The Washingtonian. She has contributed articles to many anthologies and collections on poetry and the history of American poetry including Graywolf's After Confession and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon, and interviews of Ted Kooser and Edward Hirsch for The Writer’s Chronicle of Associated Writing Programs. She is a prolific reviewer of poetry with reviews in NEO, Spoon River Review, Psychohistory Forum, American Imago, and Psychoanalysis, Society and Culture (Palgrave).

Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The Nation, Slate, Ploughshares, The New Republic, The Atlantic and Narrative magazine, Southern Review, the American Scholar, Prairie Schooner and American Life in Poetry, which is a syndicated newspaper column edited by Ted Kooser, publishing her work in places such as The New York Times, The Seattle Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and many others. In 2004, she had the honor of reading at the Library of Congress at the invitation of Donald Hall, then US Poet Laureate, and in 2010 was a discussant with Ed Hirsch at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She is a recipient of grants from Carnegie Mellon, and the DC Commission on the Arts where she resides and continues to teach adults and college students the art of creative writing.