Jan Beatty is the author of four books of poetry, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The Switching/Yard won the 2014 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Library Journal named it one of …30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry. Beatty’s work was featured in The Huffington Post as one of ten women writers for “required reading.” Other books include Red Sugar, finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize; Boneshaker, finalist for the Milt Kessler Award; and Mad River, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her chapbook, Ravage, was published by Lefty Blondie Press in 2012. Beatty’s limited edition chapbook, Ravenous, won the 1995 State Street Prize.

Awards include a $10,000 Regional Artists Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation, the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, a finalist for the Discovery/The Nation Award, and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Individual poems have appeared in journals such as TriQuarterly, Gulf Coast, and Court Green, and Best American Poetry, with work forthcoming in POETRY. Her essays on writing have appeared in anthologies by Autumn House Press, Creative Nonfiction, and The State University of New York Press.

Beatty worked as a waitress for fifteen years, and as a welfare caseworker, an abortion counselor, and a social worker and teacher in maximum-security prisons. She is the managing editor of MadBooks, a small press that has published a series of books and chapbooks by women writers. She has toured at venues such as the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival. For twenty years, Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WESA-FM featuring national writers. Jan Beatty directs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops at Carlow University, where she is also director of creative writing and teaches in the low-residency MFA program.