Joanna Fuhrman

Background

Joanna Furhman was born on June 29, 1972, in Brooklyn, New York, United States to the family of Noah and Sandra Fuhrman.

Education

Joanna Fuhrman studied at Saint Ann's school. Then, she attended the University of Texas where in 1995 Joanna earned a bachelor's degree in Plan II Honors Program, a writing-intensive liberal arts honors program. After that, Fuhrman enrolled in the University of Washington in Seattle. She became a graduate in 1998.

Career

Joanna Furhman is an experienced teacher of creative writing. She has been teaching for more than 20 years. Joanna has taught creative writing at the University of Washington, Duke/Rutgers Summer Program in Berlin, 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, the Waterways Project, Teachers & Writers, Poets House and CEPP. She currently teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence Writers Village and coordinates the introduction to creative writing program at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

As a poet, she is the author of five collections of poems: The Year of Yellow Butterflies, Pageant, Moraine, Ugh Ugh Ocean, and Freud in Brooklyn. In 2021, Hanging Loose will publish Joanna's sixth book, To a New Era. In 2011, Least Weasel published her chapbook The Emotive Function.

Besides, Furhman is a former poetry editor of Ping Pong and Boog City.

Achievements

• Joanna's books have been taught in writing classes at The University of Louisiana, The University of Pittsburgh, The Writers Studio and many others. She has read her work at colleges, literary centers, bookstores, and galleries across the country. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including New American Writing, The Believer, Volt, Fence, Lit, Quarterly West, Conduit, and American Letters and Commentary, and in anthologies published by Soft Skull Press, HarperCollins, New York University, and Carnegie Mellon University.
  
  The poem Stagflation won a 2011 Pushcart Prize.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Ugh Ugh Ocean

    (While Fuhrman's debut, Freud in Brooklyn, won attention f...)

    2003
  • Pageant

    (Fuhrman's fourth book of pop-surrealist lyrical poetry un...)

    2009
  • Moraine

    (Fuhrman sifts through the debris of modern day life and m...)

    2006
  • Freud in Brooklyn

    (Fuhrman's first collection is an uneven blend of oblique ...)

    1999
  • The Year of Yellow Butterflies 2015

Views

Joanna Fuhrman says that all of the arts are important in terms of being a human being, which means being able not only to express oneself, but being able to enjoy art. If a person has never really created art, he is not able to enjoy it in the same way.

Quotations: "Usually, when I write poetry I don’t transcribe my dreams, but use the ideas in the dream as something to riff on or play with."

Membership

• The Alice James Books Cooperative Board

Connections

Joanna is married to Robert Kerr, a playwright.

Father:

Noah Fuhrman

Mother:

Sandra Fuhrman

Spouse:

Robert Kerr

References

• Home | Joanna Fuhrman Official web-site