Barbara Henning

Poet and fiction writer Barbara Henning (she/her) was born in Detroit, Michigan. Lewis Warsh published her first book of poems, Smoking in the Twilight Bar (United Artists Books, 1988), as well as her most recent book of poems, Digigram (United Artists Books, 2020). Other poetry collections include A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press, 2015), A Swift Passage (Quale Press, 2013), Cities and Memory (Chax Press, 2010), My Autobiography (United Artists Books, 2007), Detective Sentences (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001), and Love Makes Thinking Dark (United Artists Books, 1995). She has published many poetry pamphlets and chapbooks, including Take It Down, published in The Brooklyn Rail in 2022 and by above/ground press in 2023.

Henning is the author of five novels: Just Like That (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018); Thirty Miles to Rosebud (BlazeVOX [books], 2009); You, Me, and the Insects (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005); and Black Lace (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001). She is also the author of Ferne: a Detroit Story (Spuyten Duyvil 2022), selected as a Notable Book of 2023 by the Library of Michigan, and Poets on the Road, a celebration of Henning’s and coauthor Maureen Owen’s extensive reading road trip across the United States in 2019 (City Point Press, 2023). Henning edited a book of interviews, Looking Up Harryette Mullen (Belladonna*, 2011), Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), and Prompt Book: Experiments for Writing Poetry and Fiction (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). 

She attended Wayne State University before moving to New York City with her two children in 1983. She has also lived in Tucson, Arizona, and in Tesuque, New Mexico. As a longtime yoga practitioner, she has lived and studied in Mysore, India, with Shankaranarayana Jois. She was the editor of the poetry and art journal Long News: In the Short Century from 1991 to 1994. Henning has taught at Naropa University, the University of Arizona, and Long Island University in Brooklyn, where she is professor emerita.