Janet Kaplan

Who is Janet Kaplan?

Janet Kaplan is an American poet and professor. She is the author of three books: The Ground Note, "The Glazier’s County", winner of the 2003 Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University Press, and Dreamlife of the Philanthropist: Prose Poems & Prose Sonnets, winner of the 2011 Ernest Sandeen Prize.

Her honors include fellowships at Yaddo, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation in Illinois. She has received the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Award for Excellence in Poetry and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. In 2011, her limited edition chapbook, Ascending Descending, was adapted to the opera in a soprano song cycle by Martin Hennessy.

Kaplan attended Lehman College and Columbia University. She earned her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. For several years, Kaplan worked as Poet in Residence at Fordham University. She currently teaches poetry and creative writing at Hofstra University. She is founder of Red Glass Books, a small press with titles from Kate Greenstreet, Edwin Torres, Margaret Diehl, and Patricia Spears Jones, among others.