Author Jan Beatty stopped by the Bunker to talk about her award-winning memoir, American Bastard. If you follow the show, you know that title alone was going to Brad interested. But, the two writers took a really deep dive into some difficult subjects: adoption, addiction, recovery, trauma, therapy, and the brokenness of some families.
Just the little things that make up life. This conversation is long, slow burn, and one of the best we’ve had on the Jam.
About Jan Beatty
Jan Beatty is the winner of the Red Hen Nonfiction Award for her memoir, American Bastard (2021). Her sixth book, The Body Wars (2020), was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. In the New York Times, Naomi Shihab Nye said: Jan Beatty’s new poems in “The Body Wars” shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters.
Poems have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Best American Poetry, BuzzFeed, Cherry Tree, New England Review, Pleiades, and North American Review.
Books include Jackknife: New and Collected Poems (2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Her fourth book, The Switching/Yard, was named by Library Journal as one of …30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry. The Huffington Post called her one of ten “advanced women poets for required reading.” Other books include Red Sugar, Boneshaker, and Mad River, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Limited edition chapbooks include Ravenous (State Street Chapbook Prize) and Ravage (Lefty Blondie Press). A new chapbook, Skydog, is forthcoming in December, 2021 by Lefty Blondie Press.
Awards include the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Discovery/The Nation Prize finalist, Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, $10,000 Artists Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation, and a $15,000 Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Heinz Foundation. 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 directs Creative Writing and the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops at Carlow University.
