Jo Pitkin
Poet, Educational Writer
Jo Pitkin received a B.A. from Kirkland College in Creative Writing and Literature and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. While a Kirkland student, she founded and edited the college's literary magazine, Red Weather, and won the George A. Watrous Poetry Prize. Jo won the First Annual Hudson Valley Poetry Contest and Lyra's Fourth Annual Poetry Prize. She has been a finalist in numerous national literary contests, including Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Felix Pollak Prize, Nimrod/Hardman Literary Awards, Owl Creek Press, Peregrine Smith Poetry Competition, and Wesleyan University Press New Poets Series. She was a semifinalist in Ohio University's Hollis Summers Prize and the "Discovery"/The Nation Contest. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, The Measure. Her poems have appeared in Ironwood, Quarterly West, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, Stone Canoe, and others.
A former editor in Secondary English at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, Jo has worked full time as a freelance educational writer since 1983. Jo currently lives near the Hudson River in a former schoolhouse built in 1830.
Selected Publications:
• Around the Sun: Our Solar System (Macmillan/McGraw-Hill)
• Stargazing: A History of the Telescope (Macmillan/McGraw-Hill)
• Stargazers: Astronomy in Ancient Times (Macmillan/McGraw-Hill)
• FOCUS on Comparing and Contrasting, Books A – H (Curriculum Associates, Inc.)
• ZOOM IN on Comparing and Contrasting, Books E – G (Curriculum
Associates, Inc.)
• SPOTLIGHT on Revising and Editing, Book F (Curriculum Associates, Inc.)
• George Caitlin, Frontier Painter (Houghton Mifflin Company)
• The Tennessee Tornado: Wilma Rudolph (Houghton Mifflin Company)
• Bill Pickett: Rodeo King (Houghton Mifflin Company)
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and Related Readings (McDougal Littell)
• Jubilee by Margaret Walker and Related Readings (McDougal Littell)
• The Chosen by Chaim Potok and Related Readings (McDougal Littell)
Email: jop@bestweb.net
