Janice Alper

Biography

Janice Pearlstein Alper is a superager who has had many lives and careers. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940, she attended local public schools and received first a B.A., then an M.A. in Speech Therapy. In 1962, she married the love of her life, Marvin Alper, and they were together until his untimely death in 2013. They moved to California in 1970 with four children and a dog.  Janice was the quintessential volunteer and suburban housewife, but her restless spirit urged her to seek a degree in Jewish education. She had a stellar 35-year career as a Jewish educator and communal worker, which culminated in a retirement job in Melbourne, Australia. When the couple finally settled in their retirement years in La Jolla, California, Janice returned to her first love, writing. She found her voice in poetry. Eventually, she was accepted into the Creative Writing Program/Poetry, at San Diego State University and will receive her MFA in 2027. Her poems have been published in The San Diego Poetry Annual, Waymark: Voices of the Valley, The Jewish Writing Project, and several anthologies. One of her essays is included in “When A Woman Tells The Truth: Creative Writing by Women Over 80,” and elsewhere. She is the author of a memoir, “Sitting on the Stoop: A Girl Grows in Brooklyn, 1944-1957.” Janice has been privileged to travel to all seven continents and often writes about her travels in her poems. You can follow her at www.janicesjottings1.com

What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?

As a child, I lived with my Orthodox Jewish grandparents in the same household. I frequently rely on these memories to find their way into my poems. One of them, “My Grandmother’s Candlesticks,” was one of the first poems I ever had published. Another poem, “My Zayda’s Kiddish Cup,” was published in the online journal Of the Book. Sometimes I turn to biblical sources as prompts for new poems, and I often write about Israel. Occasionally I may insert a Yiddish or Hebrew expression into my work.

Published Works

Sitting on the Stoop: A Girl Grows in Brooklyn, 1944-1957 (KDP Publications, 2023)

Links to Sample Works

Jewish Writing Project, “Grandma’s Candlesticks” 

Subject Matter

Aging, Israel, Art & Ekphrasis, Childhood, Cultural Identity, Death, Environment & Climate Crisis, Family, Grief & Elegy, Jewishness, Loss, Love, Marriage, Midrash, Narrative, Parenting, Politics, Torah, Yiddish Language & Yidishkayt, Documentary Poetics.

Profile created by Janice Alper.