Jan Shoemaker grew up in Saginaw, Michigan. Shortly after finishing her B.A. in English at Michigan State University, she moved to Seattle where she waited tables at the Pike Place Market and wrote poems while she rode ferries around Puget Sound. In the years that followed, she wrote poems while waitressing on the Maine coast and in Rhode Island. Eventually, she returned to Lansing Michigan to be closer to her family and make a career in education.
She has been teaching high school in mid-Michigan for twenty-eight years, first for the Diocese of Lansing and currently at a public high school outside the city. She sees her real imprint on her school’s curriculum in the World’s Religions class affording her students field trips to synagogues and churches and mosques, as well as a Hindu Temple, and a Buddhist monastery. She is a recipient of the Greater Lansing United Nation Association’s Loy LaSalle Award for outstanding contributions to Global Education and International Understanding. In addition to teaching, she is a part-time bookseller at independently owned and run Schuler Books in Okemos, Michigan.
Her work has been featured on public radio, anthologized, and published in many magazines and journals including River Teeth, The Sun, Fourth Genre, Colorado Review, Upstreet, and Sufi Journal. She earned an MFA at Ashland University. In 2016 her first book Flesh and Stones, Fieldnotes on a Finite World was published by the Ohio based Bottom Dog Press.
She has been teaching high school in mid-Michigan for twenty-eight years, first for the Diocese of Lansing and currently at a public high school outside the city. She sees her real imprint on her school’s curriculum in the World’s Religions class affording her students field trips to synagogues and churches and mosques, as well as a Hindu Temple, and a Buddhist monastery. She is a recipient of the Greater Lansing United Nation Association’s Loy LaSalle Award for outstanding contributions to Global Education and International Understanding. In addition to teaching, she is a part-time bookseller at independently owned and run Schuler Books in Okemos, Michigan.
Her work has been featured on public radio, anthologized, and published in many magazines and journals including River Teeth, The Sun, Fourth Genre, Colorado Review, Upstreet, and Sufi Journal. She earned an MFA at Ashland University. In 2016 her first book Flesh and Stones, Fieldnotes on a Finite World was published by the Ohio based Bottom Dog Press.
Selected Published Works
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2017
2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2003 2002 2001 |
"Slow Learner," Still Point Arts Quarterly, Summer 2017
"At Sixty," The Pinch, Fall 2016 "What the Whelk Shells Tell," River Teeth, Spring 2016 "A Better View," Upstreet, Spring 2015 “Still Right Here,” Fjords Journal, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2015 “A Decent Number of Atheists,” WomenArts Journal, Volume 5, 2015 “The Fall,” River Teeth Journal, Volume 16, Number 2, 2015 “A Wedge of Light,” Mud Season Review, Volume 1, 2015 “Boot Camp of Collapsing Forms,” Sufi Journal, Issue 88, Winter 2015 “Ellora,” American Literary Review, Issue 3, Fall 2014 “Tenebrae,” Colorado Review, Volume 41, Issue 2, Summer 2014 “The Enormity Club,” Sufi Journal, Issue 84, Winter 2013 “Believer,” MAKE Literary Magazine, Issue 13, October 2012 “Cute,” Clockhouse Review, Issue 1, Summer 2012 “In My End,” Under the Sun, Vol. XVI, No. 1, 2011 “Weight,” Dos Passos Review, Vol. 8, No. 1, Fall 2011 “What Anna Took to Read,” Rockhurst Review, Vol. 24, Spring 2011 “The Winter of My Bisque Intent” Passages North, Issue 32 , 2011 “Under the Minarets,” Sufi Journal, Issue 80, 2010 “Moira and Me,” Under the Sun, Vol. XV, No. 1, 2010 “Tangibles,” The Mochila Review, Vol. 12, 2010 “This Good Wood,” The Rambler, Vol. 5 No.2, March/April 2009 “The F-Bomb,” Rockhurst Review, Vol. 21, Spring 2008 “Koans From My Mother,” The Sun Magazine, Issue 391, July 2008 “Habits of Separation," The Rambler, Volume 5, Issue 3, May/June 2008 “Sitting,” Out of Line, 2008 “Letting Go,” The Rambler, Volume 5, Number 1, Jan/Feb 2008 “DTs and Me,” The Rambler, Volume 4, Number 5, Sept/Oct 2007 “Right Place,” The Rambler, Volume 4, Number 4, July/August 2007 “Big Shot,” Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Volume 9 ,Number 1, Spring 2007 “What Would Buddy Do?” The Rambler, Volume 4, Number 2, March/April 2007 “23rd Floor,” Out of Line, 2007 “Where The Water Is,” The Sun Magazine, Issue 366, June 2006 “Objection,” Zion’s Herald, Vol. 180, Issue 3, May/June 2006 “Riding Along,” Karamu, Volume 19, Issue 2, Spring 2005 “Earthenware,” Driftwood, Spring 2005 “Leap of Faith,” The Redwood Coast Review, Col. 5, No. 3, Summer 2003 “East of Eden,” The Other Side, Vol. 39, No. 3, May/June 2003 “Interiors,” Steam Ticket, Volume 5, 2002 “Menopause and T. S. Eliot,” Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2001 “Tintern Abbey,” The Chrysalis Reader, Vol. 5, 1998 “My Good Body,” Passages North, Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2001 “As We Forgive Those,” New Thought, Vol. 85, No. 1, Spring 2001 |
