Joan Larkin
Joan Larkin (born April 16, 1939, in Boston) is an American poet, writer, and teacher. She was active in the small press lesbian feminist publishing explosion of the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. The science fiction writer Donald Moffitt was her brother.
Joan Larkin
- Name
- Joan Larkin
- Born
- 1939
- Birthplace
- Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
- Occupation
- poet, writer, teacher
- Nationality
- United States
- Education
- Swarthmore College
- Honours
- Lambda Literary Award · Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets · Shelley Memorial Award
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wikidata · Q13563279 · wikipedia · Joan Larkin
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Joan Larkin • Born — 1939 • Birthplace — Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. • Occupation — poet, writer, teacher • Website — http: www.joanlarkin.com/
Education and career
Education and career
Joan Larkin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Swarthmore College, a Master of Arts degree in English at the University of Arizona, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting at Brooklyn College. Larkin has served on the faculties of Brooklyn College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Goddard College, and has served as Distinguished Visiting Poet at Columbia College Chicago and the core faculty of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Poetry Writing and Translation at Drew University. Larkin was a visiting instructor (poet-in-residence) at West Side YMCA Writers Community in New York from 1994 to 1996. In 1975, she co-founded the independent small press Out & Out Books and co-edited the anthologies Amazon Poetry and Lesbian Poetry (with Elly Bulkin).
Works and themes
Works and themes
Joan Larkin's poetry collections include Old Stranger, Blue Hanuman, My Body: New and Selected Poems, Housework, A Long Sound, Sor Juana's Love Poems (translated with Jaime Manrique), and Cold River. Her writing includes The Hole in the Sheet, a Klezmer musical farce, and two books of daily meditations in the Hazelden recovery series: If You Want What We Have and Glad Day. The Living, her verse play about AIDS, has been produced at festivals in Boston and New York.
Poetry
Poetry
• Housework (Out & Out Books, 1975) • A Long Sound (Granite Press, 1986) • Cold River (Painted Leaf Press, 1997) • Sor Juana's Love Poems/ Poemas de Amor (in Spanish and English, with Jaime Manrique; Painted Leaf Press, 1997), (reprinted, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) • My Body: New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2007) • Legs Tipped With Small Claws (Argos Books Chapbook, 2012) • Blue Hanuman (Hanging Loose Press, 2014) • Old Stranger (Alice James Books, 2024)
Nonfiction
Nonfiction
• If You Want What We Have: Sponsorship Meditations (Hazelden, 1998) • Glad Day: Daily Meditations for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender People (Hazelden, 1998)
Fiction
Fiction
• "The Enemy," The Kenyon Review, Vol. XLVIII, Number 1, 2026 • "A Moment In Paradise," Altered Reality (Online), July 10, 2024 • "If There's Anything We Can Do," The Jewish Literary Journal (Online), Issue 118, April 2023 • "Minnow and Boots," ImageOutWrite, Volume 9, September 2020
Plays: staged readings, productions, publication
Plays: staged readings, productions, publication
• The AIDS Passion, staged reading, Mount Holyoke College, April 1995 • The Living, staged reading, Huntington Theater Company, Boston, December 1996; full production, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, June 2000 • The Hole in the Sheet, book and lyrics for a klezmer musical farce, music by Steve Elson (seeking production) • Wiretap, Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater, NYC, December 2001, staged reading by Brooklyn College Theater Department • Brother Dust, a hip-hop version of Sophocles' Antigone (seeking production) • "If You Were Going to Get A Pet," Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children, edited by Dana Teen Lomax (Black Radish Books, San Francisco, 2013)
Limited editions
• ‘’A Garden,’’ letterpress broadside (Center for Book Arts, NYC, 2005) • ‘’Waste Not,’’ letterpress broadside (Bridge Press, Vermont, 2005) • ‘’Boston Piano,’’ Belladonna limited edition poetry chapbook (June 2003) • ‘’Hard Differences,’’ letterpress broadside, American Populist Poetry Series (1980)
Recordings
• A Sign I Was Not Alone (LP recording of poets Adrienne Rich, Honor Moore, Audre Lorde, Joan Larkin, New York: Out & Out Books, 1980)
Collections edited
• Amazon Poetry: An Anthology (with Elly Bulkin, Out & Out Books, 1975) • Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology (with Elly Bulkin, Persephone Press, 1981) • Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: An Anthology (with Carl Morse, St. Martin's Press, 1988) • A Woman Like That: Lesbian and Bisexual Writers Tell their Coming Out Stories (Avon/Bard Books, 1999) • Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies (with David Bergman and Raphael Kadushin, Painted Leaf Press) • The Women Writers Calendar (Crossing Press, 1982–1984)
Literary prizes
Larkin was the 2011 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She also received the Poetry Society of America's 2011 Shelley Memorial Award, with Rigoberto González as co-recipient of the award. She received the Publishing Triangle's 2008 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, for her book My Body: New and Selected Poems. In addition, Larkin received the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry twice, in 1989 (for Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, with Carl Morse) and in 1997 (for Cold River). Her anthology of coming out stories, A Woman Like That, was nominated for a Publishing Triangle award and a Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2000. She served as poetry editor for the first three years of the queer literary journal Bloom. She was co-editor, with David Bergman, of the Living Out autobiography series at the University of Wisconsin Press. Her other awards include fellowships in poetry and playwriting from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (1995), New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts (1987–1988), as well as a Creative Artists public service grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in 1976 and in 1980.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Joan Larkin, revision 1373345463 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
References
Citations
References
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Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 31 August 2026.
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