Biography
Ruth L. Schwartz is the author of three award-winning books of poetry and a memoir: Edgewater, selected by Jane Hirshfield as a 2001 National Poetry Series winner (HarperCollins, 2002); Singular Bodies (Anhinga Press, 2001), winner of the 2000 Anhinga Prize for Poetry; Accordion Breathing and Dancing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), winner of the 1994 Associated Writing Programs Award; and Death in Reverse: A Love Story (Michigan State University Press, 2004).
Ruth has won over a dozen national literary prizes, including two Nimrod/Pablo Neruda Awards, two Chelsea Magazine Editor's Awards, the North Carolina Writer's Network Randall Jarrell Prize, and the New Letters Prize in Poetry. She has received grants from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Astraea Foundation. Her poems have been anthologized in The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave (St. Martin's Press, 2000), American Poetry: Next Generation (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2000), The New Young American Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), and elsewhere.
Born in 1962 in Geneva, New York, Ruth spent her childhood and early adulthood moving around the country. She received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, then settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985. She has traveled extensively in Latin America, and speaks fluent Spanish.
For many years, Ruth made her living as a public health educator, trainer and consultant specializing in AIDS and cancer. From 1998-2004 she taught Creative Writing at Cleveland State University, Goddard College, Mills College, California State University-Fresno, and California College of the Arts. She is currently a certified practitioner of Depth Hypnosis and Shamanic Counseling, and also directs the Anam.Cara House, a center for healing arts in Oakland, CA.
Biography from: ruthschwartz.com
