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Home > Joel Savishinsky

Joel Savishinsky [1]

Listed as: 
Poet, Creative Nonfiction Writer
Public address: 
Seattle, WA
Washington US
Email: 
savishin@gmail.com
Bio: 

Joel Savishinsky is an anthropologist, gerontologist, poet and writer, whose career has included work in western Turkey, the Canadian North, a working-class London borough, villages in South India and the Bahamas, and American nursing homes and retirement communities. His books include The Trail of the Hare: Life and Stress in An Arctic Community (Gordon and Breach, 1974; revised edition 1994), Dementia Sufferers and Their Caregivers in The London Borough of Islington (Polytechnic of North London Press, 1990), The Ends of Time: Life and Work in A Nursing Home (Bergin and Garvey, 1991), Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America (Cornell University Press, 2001). The latter two volumes each won the Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Publishing, the book-of-the-year prize given by the Gerontological Society of America.  His poetry, short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Writers Review, The Avocet, Beyond Words, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, Caesura, Cirque, The Examined Life Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Pontoon Poetry, Soul-Lit, and Windfall. In 2023, his collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging, was published by The Poetry Box. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Museums of Canada, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 2008, he has been the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus in the Social Sciences at Ithaca College. savishin@gmail.com [2];  https://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/savishin [3]

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
In which languages are you fluent?: 
English
Favorite authors: 
William Blake, Walt Whitman, John Dos Passos, Virginia Woolf, Mary Oliver, Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Chatwin, Margaret Mead, Barbara Tuchman, Tracy Kidder
Born in: 
New York, NY
New York
Raised in: 
New York, NY
New York
Website: 
https://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/savishin [3]
Prizes won: 

 

1992  Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Publishing, Gerontological Society of America, for the book The Ends of Time: Life and Work in A Nursing Home (New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1991).

2001  Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Publishing, Gerontological Society of America, for the book Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2001).

A Pushcart Prize nomination (2023 from Blink-Ink).

Grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Museums of Canada, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He is the Charles A Dana Professor Emeritus in the Social Sciences at Ithaca College.

Individual poems, nonfiction and stories have been honored by American Writers Review, Arlington Literary Review, Blink-Ink, California State Poetry Society, Compass Rose Literary Journal, Passager, Pontoon Poetry, and Yearbook of American Poetry.

What I'm reading now: 
Parting The Waters: America in the King Years by Taylor Branch
Identifies as: 
American
Prefers to work with: 
Adults

Source URL:https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/joel_savishinsky

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/joel_savishinsky [2] mailto:savishin@gmail.com [3] https://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/savishin