Jane Berger Herschlag

Jane Berger Herschlag—a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, is a former apparel designer, textile designer, model home decorator, and home stager for sales purposes. With her husband, Herb, they designed a textiles and wallcoverings collection, American Gardens by Jane, manufactured by Imperial Wallcovering. They licensed their kitchen, bath, and home décor designs with home furnishings manufacturers. Jane got her B.A. in Creative Writing and Women’s Studies from Hunter College, and her M.A. from Creative Writing from CCNY, having won numerous writing awards from both institutions.

An avid photographer and lover of nature, she was a board member of Richter Assoc. of the Arts, and, the Land Trust of Danbury. She curated open mic poetry readings at the West Side YMCA in NYC for seven years, and at a Fifth Avenue Deli in NYC, Picnic Place; reviewed by the New York Times. Jane ran a peer poetry workshop from her home for ten years.

Jane taught creative writing at a NYC grade school and high school, and taught children and adults at ESCAPE to the Arts—the Writer’s Voice at the regional YMCA of Western Connecticut. She read at libraries, and art organizations, and on local tv.

Her Docu-Poetry chapbook, Bully in The Spotlight is published by Pudding House Publications. Her full-length poetry collection includes her photographs and ekphrastic poems. When the Mouth Can’t Speak the Body will, is published by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have been included in many university presses and anthologies.

As Q.M. Zhang, author of Accomplice to Memory, said, Herschlag looks both inside and outside herself, weaving other stories of unspeakable suffering and loss alongside her own, in ways that create shared meaning.

Her memoir, for which she is seeking publication, A Failed Analysis Redeemed, takes readers on her arduous journey from victim to victor as she questions her history, then conquers it. Readers travel with her through the pain of discovery, and the joy of regaining a self, free of victimhood or guilt. Jane says, Going public in writing and at readings feeds health and freedom from the captivity of abuse. And it hopefully seeds that growth in readers and listeners.