Hettie Jones with Bob Holman

Poet Hettie Jones and Rail contributor Bob Holman discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.

Hettie Jones is an American poet. She has written 23 books that include a memoir of the Beat Generation, three volumes of poetry, and publications for children and young adults, including The Trees Stand Shining and Big Star Fallin’ Mama: Five Women in Black Music.

Jones is a longtime editor and has taught poetry, fiction, and memoir at many universities, including Penn State University, NYU, the 92nd Street Y, University of Wyoming, and Parsons School of Design. Jones is a former chair of the PEN Prison Writing Committee, and from 1989 to 2002 she ran a writing workshop at the New York State Correctional Facility for Women at Bedford Hills, which included inmate Judy Clark as a student. This workshop hailed as inspiration for Jones’s nationally distributed collection, Aliens At The Border. Jones also co-authored a memoir for Rita Marley, widow of Bob Marley. More recently, Jones has received grants to begin a writing program on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the Lower East Side Girls Club Center for Community. Her book, Love, H, a selection from 40 years of correspondence with the sculptor Helene Dorn, was published by Duke University Press in October 2016.

Bob Holman is a contributor of the Rail. Among his contributions are:

• EDITOR’S NOTE, April 2015
• TRIBUTE TO PAUL GULIELMETTI, April 2006
• SAMUEL JABLON & STEFAN BONDELL with BOB HOLMAN, April 2015
• NIKHIL MELNECHUK with BOB HOLMAN, April 2015
• PHONG BUI with BOB HOLMAN, April 2015
• THE HAMMER OF JUSTICE, April 2015
• ALASKA LANGUAGE ODYSSEY, by BOB HOLMAN
• TWO, by BOB HOLMAN
• ALASKA ODYSSEY ESSAY, by BOB HOLMAN

This conversation is sponsored by Spoonbill & Sugartown Booksellers. Support Spoonbill by donating to their GoFundMe here.

The New Social Environment — Daily conversations with artists, writers, filmmakers, poets around the world where we discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.