Dr Jeri Kroll received an honours BA from Smith College (1967), an MA with Distinction from the University of Warwick in the UK (1968) and a Ph D from Columbia University (1974). She wrote her dissertation on Samuel Beckett's early fiction. After teaching in the US and England, she moved to Adelaide in 1978, where she has taught at Flinders and Adelaide Universities and the former South Australian College of Advanced Education.

In addition, she worked for several years at Radio University 5UV producing Writers' Radio and Authors' Proof as well as Wordwaves. She freelanced from 1986-1993 as a writer and community artsworker, undertaking numerous residencies with local councils and organisations. In 1991 she held a Community Writer's Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

At present she is Associate Professor of English at Flinders University and Program Coordinator of Creative Writing. She has published articles on Samuel Beckett, contemporary poetry and the pedagogy of creative writing as well as on children's literature.

Jeri has received numerous state and federal grants as well as awards. She has written 22 books of poetry and fiction for adults and young people; some of them have been published in Canada, New Zealand, Korea, the UK and the US. Her first poetry collection, Death as Mr Right , won second prize in the Anne Elder Award. It was followed by Indian Movies, Monster Love and House Arrest, as well as The Electrolux Man and Other Stories. She is the author of numerous picture books, including Swamp Soup and A Coat of Cats , both Children's Book Council Notable Books (1996, 1999). Her fiction includes two older reader novels, Bruise and Goliath, and three young adult titles, Better Than Blue, Beyond Blue and the newest, Riding the Blues, which came out in 2001. Fit For a Prince, a SOLO chapter book, came out that year as well.

Her latest releases in 2004 are a novel for upper-primary/lower secondary children, Mickey's Little Book of Letters, and a collection of poems, The Mother Workshops.

Jeri can be booked for appearances through her agent Carole Carroll.

click a photo below to see the larger image

Jeri on Petros, Keith Horse Trials, June 2004		Jeri on Petros,Yankalilla Show, October 2003.		Monarto Horse Trials, Sept 2004		Monarto Horse Trials, Sept 2004

Jeri Kroll was born and grew up in New York City, but she spent ten summers in the Catskill Mountains at camp pretending she wasn't a city person. She has travelled widely in Europe and began her academic career in the UK and the US before moving to Australia in 1978.

Jeri's hectic life is divided between her job, writing, family and horses. She has a son, two stepchildren, four horses, two dogs, two cats and not much spare time - a fact her husband Jeff Chilton often points out to her. In her second teenagerhood, she has been involved in the Fleurieu Pony Club for a number of years. Although she still gets really nervous, she showjumps and does a bit of one-day eventing.

Jeri wrote her first poems when she was eight, encouraged by her sister, Judith Kroll, who is also a writer and academic. Jeri began her writing career by publishing books of poems and stories for adults. When she had her own child, she read to him all the time. Then she decided to try writing a picture book herself.

By the way, that's Jeri on the cover of Riding the Blues with her chestnut mare, Shady Lady. The photo was taken by photographer Peter Gower gowerphotos.tripod.com at an event at Monarto Equestrian Centre in 1997.

PUBLICATIONS: Creative

Poetry

The Mother Workshops. Wollongong: Five Islands Press, 2004.
House Arrest. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1993.
Monster Love. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1990.
Indian Movies. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1984.
Death as Mr. Right. Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets, 1982.

Fiction

The Electrolux Man and Other Stories. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1987.

Young Adult Fiction

Riding the Blues. Melbourne: Lothian Books, 2001.
Beyond Blue. Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.
Better Than Blue. Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997.

Older Reader Fiction

Mickey’s Little Book of Letters. Melbourne: Lothian Books, 2004.
Bruise. Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.
Goliath. Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.

Chapter Book

Fit for a Prince. Adelaide: Omnibus Books (Scholastic Australia), 2001. Illustrated by Don Hatcher.

Children's Picture Books

A Coat of Cats. Paperback. Melbourne: Lothian Books; United Kingdom: Happy Cat Books, 2000.
A Coat of Cats. Hardback. Melbourne: Lothian Books, 1998.
Swamp Soup. (poems) Melbourne: Lothian Books, 1995.
What Goes With Toes? Boston: Houghton Mifflin USA, 1995-99.
Beaches. Boston: Houghton Mifflin USA, 1995-99.
What Goes With Toes? & Beaches translated into Spanish as Mis Pies & La Playa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin USA, 1997.
Sunny Faces. Melbourne: Mammoth (Reed Books Australia), 1995.
You Be the Witch. Melbourne: Lothian Books, 1994.

Anthologies (Co-edited)

Tuesday Night Live: Fifteen Years of Friendly Street. Eds. Jeri Kroll, Barry Westburg. Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets, Wakefield Press, 1993.
Montage. Eds. Val Driesener, Jeri Kroll, Anne-Marie Mykyta. Adelaide: Country and City Women Writers, 1985.
No. 8 Friendly Street Poetry Reader. Eds. Robert Clark, Jeri Kroll. Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets, 1984.

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PUBLICATIONS: Scholarship
Recent (2001-2005)

Book Chapters

“Creative Writing: The House of Words in the New Millennium” in Innovation in Australian Arts, Media, Design: Fresh Challenges for the Tertiary Sector. Eds. Rod Wissler, Brad Haseman, Sue-Anne Wallace, Michael Keane (selection and editorial material). Flaxton: Post Pressed, 2004, 41-54 (chapter 4). (Australian Academy of the Humanities/Australian Research Council’s Learned Academies Special Projects Scheme)

“Popular as a Dirty Word: Investigating Literary and Cultural Biases Through a Study of Paul Jennings” in Crossing the Boundaries. Eds. Geoff Bull and Michèle Anstey. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Australia, 2002, 261-281.

Encyclopedia Entries

Forthcoming in Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature (Mem Fox and Gillian Rubinstein entries).

Refereed Articles

“How to Write a ‘How to Write’ Book: The Writer as Entrepreneur.” Co-authored with Steve Evans. TEXT, Vol. 9, No. 1 (April 2005), 1-26. [online] Available from www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text

“The Resurrected Author: Creative Writers in Twenty-first Century Higher Education.” New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2004), 89-102.

“The Role of the Examiner: Scholar, Reviewer, Critic, Judge, Mentor.” TEXT, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oct 2004), 1-13. [online] Available from www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text

“Subversive and Therapeutic: The Imaginative Power of Child’s Play in Morris Gleitzman’s Recent Fiction” (“Children’s Play as Subversive Activity”) in Seriously Playful: Genre, Performance & Text. Eds. Sharyn Pearce & Kerry Mallan. Flaxton: Post Pressed, 2004, 225-238 (chapter 23).

“The Exegesis and the Gentle Reader/Writer” (keynote speech) TEXT Special Issue Website Series, 3: Illuminating the Exegesis, University of Ballarat Eds. J. Fletcher and A. Mann. April, 2004, 1-14. [online] Available from www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text

“Wicked!: A Marriage of Two Weird Minds?: Dual Perspectives in a Collaborative Novel” in Cinderella Transformed. Eds. John McKenzie, Doreen Darnell and Anna Smith. Christchurch, NZ: Centre for Children’s Literature in association with Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research, 2003/04, 164-175.

“Creative Writing as Research and the Dilemma of Accreditation: How do we prove the value of what we do?” TEXT, Vol. 6, No. 1 April, 2002[online] Available from www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text

“‘I am a desert island’: Postmodern Landscapes in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Circe/Mud poems.’” AUMLA 96 (November 2001), 118-42.

Earlier Refereed Articles in Journals, Books, Conference Proceedings

“Honouring Students: What can a successful creative writing honours program offer?” TEXT. Vol. 4, No. 2 (Oct, 2000), refereed electronic journal – 7000-word article.

“Treading a Fine Line: Morris Gleitzman’s Provocative Fiction.” Something to Crow About: New Perspectives in Literature for Young People. Eds. Susan Clancy with David Gilbey. Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, 1999, 157-70.

“Uneasy Bedfellows: Assessing the Creative Thesis and its Exegesis.” TEXT . Vol. 3., No. 2 (Oct, 1999), refereed electronic journal – 4000-word article.

“The New Fringe Dwellers: The Problem of Ethnicity in Recent Australian Children’s Picture Books.” Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature. Vol. 9, No. 2 (August, 1999), 31-39. Reprint from Old Neighbours/New Visions, 1997.

“Imagination and Marketability: What Do Writers Do For a Living?” TEXT. Vol. 2., No. 1 (April, 1998), refereed electronic journal – 6000-word article.

“The New Fringe Dwellers: The Problem of Ethnicity in Recent Australian Children’s Picture Books.” Old Neighbours/New Visions: Selected Papers. Ed. Dr Maureen Nimon. Adelaide: Centre for Children’s Literature, UniSA, 1997, 18-30.

“A or C: Can We Assess Creative Work Fairly?” TEXT Vol. 1, No. 1 (April, 1997), refereed electronic journal – 5000-word article.

“The Two Lives of Poetry: Out of the Reading and Onto the Page.” Southerly Vol. 57, Number 1 (Autumn, 1997), 38-50.

“Gillian Rubinstein’s Beyond the Labyrinth: A Court Case and Its Aftermath.” Para *doxa: Studies in World Literary Genres. Vol. 2, Nos. 3-4 (1996), 332-345.

"Belacqua as Artist and Lover: 'What a Misfortune.’” The Beckett Studies Reader. Ed. S. E. Gontarski. Tallahassee, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993, 35-63.

‘I Create, Therefore I Am': The Artist's Mind in Samuel Beckett's Fiction." AUMLA 55 (May, 1981), 36-53.

"Belacqua as Artist and Lover: 'What a Misfortune.'" Journal of Beckett Studies, No. 3 (Summer, 1978), 10-39.

"The Surd as Inadmissible Evidence: The Case of Attorney-General v. Henry McCabe." Journal of Beckett Studies, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), 47-58.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Soundings: Poetry and Poetics: Proceedings of the Third Biennial National Conference on Poetry. Edited with intro by Lyn Jacobs and Jeri Kroll. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1998.

Unrefereed

"Beckett and Grock: Kings of Clowns." Notes on Contemporary Literature, 6, No. 1 (January, 1976), 7-14.