Portage Playwright's Work Selected for Fenton Festival

Janet Heller’s one-act play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest sponsored by the Fenton Village Players.

Her drama will be performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One Act Play Festival on Fri. June 24 and Sat. June  25, 2011, at 7 p.m. in Fenton.

The Cell Phone concerns generational and ethnic conflict between two women exercising at a fitness center.

Heller is a resident of Portage who has taught English and women’s studies courses at Grand Valley State University, Albion College, Michigan State University, Olivet College, and Western Michigan University. She has a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. She is a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and she is now president of the Michigan College English Association.

Her poetry chapbook Traffic Stop is forthcoming in July 2011 from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in many journals. She is a founding mother and editor of Primavera, a literary magazine. Primavera has won awards from Chicago Women in Publishing and the Illinois Arts Council and grants from CCLM and the NEA and was among the first journals to publish work by writers like Louise Erdrich.

Her fiction picture book about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Sylvan Dell, 2006), has received many awards, including a Book Sense Pick for 2006, a Children’s Choices selection for 2007, a Benjamin Franklin Award for 2007, and a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for 2007. In 2009, How the Moon Regained Her Shape was one of five finalists for the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award given by the Oregon Reading Association.

For more information, please contact Janet Heller at janetheller@charter.net or the Fenton village Players at office@fentonvillageplayers.org or genoref@charter.net