Janine Joseph is a poet, librettist, and essayist born in the Philippines. She is the author of Driving Without a License (Alice James Books, 2016), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize. Driving Without a License was awarded the da Vinci Eye award, named an Honorable Mention for the 2018 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, Eric Hoffer Award, and Julie Suk Award. Janine has bylines in The Atlantic, and her poems and essays have appeared in World Literature Today, The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice, Kenyon Review, Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Zócalo Public Square, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. Her commissioned libretti for the Houston Grand Opera/HGOco include What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline, “On This Muddy Water”: Voices from the Houston Ship Channel, From My Mother's Mother, and an upcoming choral piece for the Rendezvous of the Century gala. A co-organizer for Undocupoets, Janine is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University.
At MacDowell, she continued her work on her second collection of poems, tentatively titled Vulnerability Roadshow. Her poem, “In the Ecotone,” composed while in residence at MacDowell, was accepted for publication and will appear in the spring 2020 issue of The Georgia Review.
