Anita Barrows has received awards for her poetry from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, the Robinson Jeffers Foundation, and publications by The Quarterly Review of Literature and the Riverstone Press.

She has three volumes of poetry published by Kelsay Books: Exile, We Are the Hunger, and Testimony. Her three poetry chapbooks from Quelquefois Press are housed, among other places, in libraries in Baghdad and Kabul, in the British Museum, and in university collections throughout the United States.

Barrows’ translations with Joanna Macy of Rilke’s poetry and prose have been widely quoted, set to music, and nominated for national awards. She has also done translations of novels, poetry, drama and non-fiction from French and Italian for British and American publishers.

With a PhD in psychology, Barrows teaches at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and maintains an active private practice where she specializes in trauma and developmental disabilities in children, adolescents and adults. Barrows has long been an activist for social justice. She is a mother and a grandmother and lives in Berkeley with a menagerie of dogs, cats and birds.

Her forthcoming novel, The Language of Birds, will be available from She Writes Press in Spring, 2022.