Judy
Hogan was born in Zenith, Kansas, on May 27, 1937. She has lived in North Carolina and in the
Triangle area for 36 years. She brought
to the state a new poetry journal (Hyperion, 1970-81) and in 1976 she
founded Carolina Wren Press. She has
been active in the area since the early 70s as a reviewer, book distributor,
publisher, teacher, writing consultant, and organizer of conferences, readings,
and book signing events. In 1984 she
helped found and was the first President of the N.C. Writers' Network, serving
until 1987.
She has published five volumes of
poetry with small presses, and two prose works, Watering the Roots in a
Democracy (1989) and The PMZ Poor Woman’s Cookbook (2000). A translation of her volume of poetry, Beaver
Soul, was published by the Kostroma Writers’ Organization in 1997. Her papers, correspondence, and 25 years of
extensive diaries are in the Special Collections Department of the Perkins
Library at Duke University. She has
taught all forms of creative writing since 1974, through libraries, in
extension programs, and on her own. She
taught Freshman English at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, 2004-2006. She teaches writing workshops and does free
lance editing for creative writers.
Since mid-2007 she has been able to give more time to her fiction,
creative non-fiction, and poetry.
Between 1990 and 2007 she visited
Kostroma, Russia, five times, teaching American literature at Kostroma
University in 1995, and working on some exchange visits and publishing with
Kostroma writers and artists. She gave a
paper on the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, at a Literature Conference at
Kostroma University in March, 2007.
She’s active in environmental and community issues in Chatham County,
was a member of the Steering Committee of the Chatham Coalition (2004-06),
belongs to N.C. WARN, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, Carolina Crime
Writers, N.C. Writers’ Network, and Southeast Chatham Citizens’ Advisory
Council.
Between 1975 and 1978 she was the chair person for the national grassroots small press association, COSMEP. Between 1974 and 1978 she worked on several small press distribution projects, and between 1978 and 1981, she coordinated the Home Grown Books project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, to syndicate small press reviews for small town newspapers. Judy helped found and was the first president of the board of the N.C. Writers Network from 1985-87. Between 1981 and 1991 she taught free A Roadmap to Great Literature for New Writers courses in the Durham County Library. Between 1986 and 1989 she also taught classes in the May Memorial Library in Burlington, because of grants received from the National Endowment for the Humanities Library Program.
Between 1964 and 1968 Judy was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California in Berkeley, emphasis Greek philosophy and literature. She completed her course work and some of the qualifying exams, but did not complete the degree. She has a B.A. in Letters from the University of Oklahoma, and studied one year in Comparative Literature on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship at Indiana University.
Her first book, Cassandra Speaking (1977) was published by Thorp Springs Press, Austin, Texas. Sunblazoned, a second collection of poems, appeared in 1982 from Sunbury Press Books, Bronx, N.Y., and was nominated for the Lamont prize. Northwoods Press in Maine published Susannah, Teach Me to Love/ Grace, Sing to Me in 1986, and Latitudes Press of Mansfield, Texas, published Light Food in 1989. She has also published individual poems, diary collages, articles, and reviews in local, state, and national literary journals and newspapers. Her book on how to organize free writing classes in libraries (Watering the Roots in a Democracy) was funded under grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and was available free to libraries all over the United States.
Under the Carolina Wren imprint, Judy put more than 100 North Carolina writers into print, either in single author editions or through anthologies. Judson Jerome called her one of the most experienced small press editors and heartily recommended her editorial consultation in a Writer's Digest article of April 1987. She continues to help writers through her writing and editing consultation service and through classes given both privately and in cooperation with arts councils and other organizations.
Since she turned Carolina Wren Press over to others in 1991, she has been able to give more time to her writing and to travel. She worked between 1990 and 1996 on some exchange visits with Russian writers. In this connection she has been studying the Russian language since 1991. In the fall of 1995 she offered a series of lectures in 20th Century American poetry to students and faculty of the English Department at the Kostroma Pedagogical University in Kostroma, Russia. She has translated and published some of the many writers she met in Kostroma and St. Petersburg, and a selection of her poems from Beaver Soul, translated into Russian, was published by the Kostroma Writers Organization in 1997.
Her papers, correspondence, and 25 years of extensive diaries are in the Special Collections Department of the Perkins Library at Duke University. Material over 10 years old may be read by the general public. This library also has the Carolina Wren Press archive. Judy believes that women must tell the true stories of their lives. She was the instigator of the Tell Me A Story That's True conference held in June 1991 at NC Central Univerity in Durham, NC.
Judy lives in Moncure, N.C., at the southern end of Jordan Lake, near the Haw, Deep, at the beginning of the Cape Fear River Basin. She works with N.C. WARN to prevent the storing of dangerous nuclear waste in this river basin. Most of the poems she has written since 1987 concern the Haw River, its animals, birds, trees, flowers. Her three children are grown, and she has five grandchildren, with one on the way.
Biography updated December 25, 2007
Related links:
Contact Judy: judyhogan@mindspring.com
Updated: December 25, 2007