BIOGRAPHY
Austin, TX, 1950
PUBLISHER'S BIO
Judith Lauter was born in Austin, Texas. When she was nine, her family moved to Michigan where she later met her husband, the poet Ken Lauter, in a poetry-writing seminar at the University of Michigan taught by Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate, 2006-7). The couple has subsequently lived in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and now make their home in Nacogdoches TX.
Judith holds a BA in English literature from the University of Michigan Honors College, three MA degrees (creative writing - University of Arizona; library & information science - University of Denver; linguistics - Washington University in St. Louis), and a PhD in communication sciences (Washington University in St. Louis). For more than three decades, she taught and directed human neuroscience laboratories at several universities (Washington University in St. Louis, University of Arizona, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches TX) before retiring in 2012.
Judith's scientific career spanning 30 years resulted in 14 book chapters, edited books, or educational videos; 35 published articles; 175 presentations both in this country and abroad; and 10 funded grants; she served on 15 PhD committees, of which she chaired 8.
In addition, she has published poems in a number of journals, and won two Hopwood Awards for poetry (University of Michigan), an Academy of American Poets prize (University of Denver), and the Norma Lowry Memorial Prize for poetry (Washington University in St. Louis). Her prize-winning photography has been compared to Eliot Porter's. (Samples are provided under the Photography/Art Main page on this site.)
Along with her book on popular neuroscience, How is Your Brain Like a Zebra? (Xlibris, 2008, www.ZebraBrain.net), Judith has published ten books of poetry-and-images. Nine were with Xlibris: A Year of Haiku; Light from the Left – poems on paintings by Rembrandt (www.LightFromTheLeft.com); Sonora Spring Haiku; Pineywoods Summer Haiku; Rockies Autumn Haiku; Coastal Bend Winter Haiku, LaNana Creek Haiku; Lady Slipper Trail Haiku; Konza Tallgrass Prairie Haiku; and the tenth, The Poet in the Park - Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Park, is from Stephen F. Austin State University Press. For more information about all of these books, click on the Poetry Main page on this site.
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PERSONAL BIO {in progress; note that a fairly complete curriculum vitae for me is included under the About the Author tab at www.ZebraBrain.net, and eventually many of those details will be incorporated here}
Family background
Education
Work experience
Family background. I was born in April,1944. My mother was from a small town in west TX, making me a second-generation Texan. Her mother was from central OH; when a girl, she had moved to Texas to marry the father of one of her childhood friends, and 18 years her senior; during their marriage he worked as a sign painter. My mother was their only child; when she was still very young, they moved to north-central TX, where her father died when she was 13 (lead poisoning was a suspected contributor, a common occupational hazard of his work as a painter), and my grandmother began working in the local school cafeteria to support them.
My father was from central Indiana, where he had grown up on an 80-acre farm owned by his parents. (I have since found it interesting that their farm was located only about 100 miles NW of the town where my maternal grandmother grew up, at about the same latitude. Also, the small rivers that run through both my grandma's and my father's hometowns are both tributaries of the Ohio.) My father had four siblings -- by birth order: three older boys, then my dad, then a girl. During the Depression my father and his oldest brother, both of whom had obtained college degrees (the brother's was in English, my dad's was in Chemistry) made a living running a studio photography business that moved around with a traveling carnival.
My mother and father met when, still working for the carnival, he came through the central TX town where she and my Grandma were living at the time, and he happened to visit the downtown drugstore where mom was working as a clerk at the soda fountain. When he asked my grandmother if he could marry my mom, Grandma said she was too young, and sent him away. He left, saying he would be be back, and in two years (during which time my mom had obtained training as a dental assistant and had begun working for a dentist in a second-floor clinic that looked out over the town square, in a building that still stands), he kept his promise.
They got married and moved south to Austin, taking my grandmother along, where they bought a little 2-bedroom frame house about 2 blocks east of the University of Texas stadium, and my dad set up a storefront photography studio on downtown 6th Street in downtown Austin, at the time a notorious red-light district with lots of street traffic, particularly on Saturday nights, where my dad made enough money to keep our family. (That little house, where I grew up, has since been removed, along with all the houses in the surrounding neighborhood, as well as much of the topography; the entire area is now a UT parking lot, though the street is still marked, and in the 1990s I was able to locate the spot where our house used to stand.)
I was born about a year after my parents were married, and the four of us lived in that little frame house. My mother began working for a downtown furniture store, and my grandmother watched me during the day as I played in the new yard around our house where my dad worked hard during his spare time, to finish putting in a lush lawn of carpet grass to ensure a safe playing surface for a baby's bare feet. I remember my parents talked about how they thought the house's location was ideal because it meant that when I reached college age and enrolled at UT, I could easily make the short walk between home and campus. Then, and in the years to come, it was always assumed, by them and by me, that I would eventually go to college; I never felt any pressure about it, it was just taken for granted.
The second daughter in our family, Joy, was born when I was 2; we spent many hours playing in the generous yard around our house, on the silky grass my dad had planted, surrounded by beautiful masonry-and-rock walls he installed himself. When I was older, on hot summer nights, the family used to either walk up the hill to the east to the city park with a swimming pool, or in the other direction, across Red River Avenue, to the UT campus, where at twilight we could watch the colony of millions of bats fly out from under the UT stadium seats. Those bats were later encouraged to re-locate to the bridges across the Colorado River (of Texas) that runs through downtown Austin.
In the 1940s and early 1950s Texas, kindergarten was not available in the public schools, so I didn't go to school until first grade, entering in the fall of 1950. I attended an elementary school (which is no longer there) located up the hill that led east from our house, for grades one through three. During my third year in school, my uncle (the same brother who had earlier worked with my father for the carnival, and who had by then settled with his wife in southern Michigan), appeared, and persuaded my dad to move our family to Michigan, where he had obtained teaching jobs for both of them in Flint. He and his wife, a school librarian, had bought a house in Ann Arbor, about 60 miles from Flint, a significant drive in those days, especially during the long cold Michigan winters.
In Flint I attended Pierson School for my fourth grade year, where I also walked to school in rain, shine, and lots of snow. The winter of 1953/4 was a hard one in Flint, especially for us folks from Austin TX for whom temperatures below freezing were extremely rare and snow an even rarer curiosity that melted as soon as the sun came up (Flint was at 43N, 83W, a long cold way from Austin's 30N, 97W down in the Texas Hill Country). My dad showed my sister and me how to use the bobsled he had built in Austin, though I remember we were not too crazy about getting the cold Michigan snow inside our snowsuits and boots.
The following summer, we moved back to Austin just for the summer, so that my parents could arrange to sell the house that they had rented out while we were gone. That done, in September 1954, we moved back up to Michigan, where my uncle had obtained two new teaching jobs in the Brighton MI school district, about 40 miles south of Flint. Because we could not find a house to rent in Brighton, we rented a lakeside cabin in nearby Whitmore Lake, where I enrolled in 5th grade. The cabin was not suitable for cold weather, having nothing but a wood fireplace for heat, so toward the end of that fall semester, we were very cold, and had to sleep with stones under our bedcovers, stones that had been heated in the fireplace.
On Christmas Day 1954 we moved to Brighton, to rent a large house on a large lot taking up a full quarter-block within a few blocks of downtown. To finish out 5th grade, I was enrolled in the one elementary school in Brighton, a few blocks from our big house. Brighton at the time was a wonderful place to grow up; kids could walk or bike just about everywhere, and we were surrounded by lakes and open fields, great for swimming and tramping during the fall and winter. In the summer we went often to nearby Bishop Lake to swim; in the winter we ice-skated on the mill pond formed by a small dam across South Ore Creek as it crossed under Main Street; South Ore Creek is a tributary of the Huron River that loops across SE Michigan, to empty into Lake Erie south of Detroit. The next year I moved up to junior high, located at the junior-high/high-school complex on a large hill in Brighton, looking toward the downtown main street. I attended school there from sixth through eighth grades. In eighth grade I took a general-science class taught by my father.
During my eighth-grade year, for a number of reasons, my parents decided to move to Ann Arbor, about 20 miles south, where they hoped I would eventually attend the University of Michigan. {more to come ---}
Judith Lauter was born in Austin, Texas. When she was nine, her family moved to Michigan where she later met her husband, the poet Ken Lauter, in a poetry-writing seminar at the University of Michigan taught by Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate, 2006-7). The couple has subsequently lived in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and now make their home in Nacogdoches TX.
Judith holds a BA in English literature from the University of Michigan Honors College, three MA degrees (creative writing - University of Arizona; library & information science - University of Denver; linguistics - Washington University in St. Louis), and a PhD in communication sciences (Washington University in St. Louis). For more than three decades, she taught and directed human neuroscience laboratories at several universities (Washington University in St. Louis, University of Arizona, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches TX) before retiring in 2012.
Judith's scientific career spanning 30 years resulted in 14 book chapters, edited books, or educational videos; 35 published articles; 175 presentations both in this country and abroad; and 10 funded grants; she served on 15 PhD committees, of which she chaired 8.
In addition, she has published poems in a number of journals, and won two Hopwood Awards for poetry (University of Michigan), an Academy of American Poets prize (University of Denver), and the Norma Lowry Memorial Prize for poetry (Washington University in St. Louis). Her prize-winning photography has been compared to Eliot Porter's. (Samples are provided under the Photography/Art Main page on this site.)
Along with her book on popular neuroscience, How is Your Brain Like a Zebra? (Xlibris, 2008, www.ZebraBrain.net), Judith has published ten books of poetry-and-images. Nine were with Xlibris: A Year of Haiku; Light from the Left – poems on paintings by Rembrandt (www.LightFromTheLeft.com); Sonora Spring Haiku; Pineywoods Summer Haiku; Rockies Autumn Haiku; Coastal Bend Winter Haiku, LaNana Creek Haiku; Lady Slipper Trail Haiku; Konza Tallgrass Prairie Haiku; and the tenth, The Poet in the Park - Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Park, is from Stephen F. Austin State University Press. For more information about all of these books, click on the Poetry Main page on this site.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PERSONAL BIO {in progress; note that a fairly complete curriculum vitae for me is included under the About the Author tab at www.ZebraBrain.net, and eventually many of those details will be incorporated here}
Family background
Education
Work experience
Family background. I was born in April,1944. My mother was from a small town in west TX, making me a second-generation Texan. Her mother was from central OH; when a girl, she had moved to Texas to marry the father of one of her childhood friends, and 18 years her senior; during their marriage he worked as a sign painter. My mother was their only child; when she was still very young, they moved to north-central TX, where her father died when she was 13 (lead poisoning was a suspected contributor, a common occupational hazard of his work as a painter), and my grandmother began working in the local school cafeteria to support them.
My father was from central Indiana, where he had grown up on an 80-acre farm owned by his parents. (I have since found it interesting that their farm was located only about 100 miles NW of the town where my maternal grandmother grew up, at about the same latitude. Also, the small rivers that run through both my grandma's and my father's hometowns are both tributaries of the Ohio.) My father had four siblings -- by birth order: three older boys, then my dad, then a girl. During the Depression my father and his oldest brother, both of whom had obtained college degrees (the brother's was in English, my dad's was in Chemistry) made a living running a studio photography business that moved around with a traveling carnival.
My mother and father met when, still working for the carnival, he came through the central TX town where she and my Grandma were living at the time, and he happened to visit the downtown drugstore where mom was working as a clerk at the soda fountain. When he asked my grandmother if he could marry my mom, Grandma said she was too young, and sent him away. He left, saying he would be be back, and in two years (during which time my mom had obtained training as a dental assistant and had begun working for a dentist in a second-floor clinic that looked out over the town square, in a building that still stands), he kept his promise.
They got married and moved south to Austin, taking my grandmother along, where they bought a little 2-bedroom frame house about 2 blocks east of the University of Texas stadium, and my dad set up a storefront photography studio on downtown 6th Street in downtown Austin, at the time a notorious red-light district with lots of street traffic, particularly on Saturday nights, where my dad made enough money to keep our family. (That little house, where I grew up, has since been removed, along with all the houses in the surrounding neighborhood, as well as much of the topography; the entire area is now a UT parking lot, though the street is still marked, and in the 1990s I was able to locate the spot where our house used to stand.)
I was born about a year after my parents were married, and the four of us lived in that little frame house. My mother began working for a downtown furniture store, and my grandmother watched me during the day as I played in the new yard around our house where my dad worked hard during his spare time, to finish putting in a lush lawn of carpet grass to ensure a safe playing surface for a baby's bare feet. I remember my parents talked about how they thought the house's location was ideal because it meant that when I reached college age and enrolled at UT, I could easily make the short walk between home and campus. Then, and in the years to come, it was always assumed, by them and by me, that I would eventually go to college; I never felt any pressure about it, it was just taken for granted.
The second daughter in our family, Joy, was born when I was 2; we spent many hours playing in the generous yard around our house, on the silky grass my dad had planted, surrounded by beautiful masonry-and-rock walls he installed himself. When I was older, on hot summer nights, the family used to either walk up the hill to the east to the city park with a swimming pool, or in the other direction, across Red River Avenue, to the UT campus, where at twilight we could watch the colony of millions of bats fly out from under the UT stadium seats. Those bats were later encouraged to re-locate to the bridges across the Colorado River (of Texas) that runs through downtown Austin.
In the 1940s and early 1950s Texas, kindergarten was not available in the public schools, so I didn't go to school until first grade, entering in the fall of 1950. I attended an elementary school (which is no longer there) located up the hill that led east from our house, for grades one through three. During my third year in school, my uncle (the same brother who had earlier worked with my father for the carnival, and who had by then settled with his wife in southern Michigan), appeared, and persuaded my dad to move our family to Michigan, where he had obtained teaching jobs for both of them in Flint. He and his wife, a school librarian, had bought a house in Ann Arbor, about 60 miles from Flint, a significant drive in those days, especially during the long cold Michigan winters.
In Flint I attended Pierson School for my fourth grade year, where I also walked to school in rain, shine, and lots of snow. The winter of 1953/4 was a hard one in Flint, especially for us folks from Austin TX for whom temperatures below freezing were extremely rare and snow an even rarer curiosity that melted as soon as the sun came up (Flint was at 43N, 83W, a long cold way from Austin's 30N, 97W down in the Texas Hill Country). My dad showed my sister and me how to use the bobsled he had built in Austin, though I remember we were not too crazy about getting the cold Michigan snow inside our snowsuits and boots.
The following summer, we moved back to Austin just for the summer, so that my parents could arrange to sell the house that they had rented out while we were gone. That done, in September 1954, we moved back up to Michigan, where my uncle had obtained two new teaching jobs in the Brighton MI school district, about 40 miles south of Flint. Because we could not find a house to rent in Brighton, we rented a lakeside cabin in nearby Whitmore Lake, where I enrolled in 5th grade. The cabin was not suitable for cold weather, having nothing but a wood fireplace for heat, so toward the end of that fall semester, we were very cold, and had to sleep with stones under our bedcovers, stones that had been heated in the fireplace.
On Christmas Day 1954 we moved to Brighton, to rent a large house on a large lot taking up a full quarter-block within a few blocks of downtown. To finish out 5th grade, I was enrolled in the one elementary school in Brighton, a few blocks from our big house. Brighton at the time was a wonderful place to grow up; kids could walk or bike just about everywhere, and we were surrounded by lakes and open fields, great for swimming and tramping during the fall and winter. In the summer we went often to nearby Bishop Lake to swim; in the winter we ice-skated on the mill pond formed by a small dam across South Ore Creek as it crossed under Main Street; South Ore Creek is a tributary of the Huron River that loops across SE Michigan, to empty into Lake Erie south of Detroit. The next year I moved up to junior high, located at the junior-high/high-school complex on a large hill in Brighton, looking toward the downtown main street. I attended school there from sixth through eighth grades. In eighth grade I took a general-science class taught by my father.
During my eighth-grade year, for a number of reasons, my parents decided to move to Ann Arbor, about 20 miles south, where they hoped I would eventually attend the University of Michigan. {more to come ---}
Copyright © 2023 Judith L. Lauter
