Janet McMillan Rives was born in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in Storrs until moving to Tucson, Arizona midway through high school. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona (B.A.) and Duke University (M.A., Ph. D.) She taught college economics for thirty-five years and retired as Professor Emerita of Economics from the University of Northern Iowa. She resides in Oro Valley, Arizona.
Her love of poetry began during her youth in New England when she discovered the poetry of Robert Frost. She has been reading poetry her entire life and writing poetry since the 1980s. She is active in small poetry writing groups in Tucson. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Lyrical Iowa, Ekphrastic Review, Sandcutters, The Avocet, The Blue Guitar, Creosote, Crosswinds, Fine Lines,The Raw Art Review, and Beyond Words and in anthologies such as Voices from the Plains, The Very Edge, and Night Forest. Her first chapbook of poetry, Into This Sea of Green: Poems from the Prairie, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. In 2023 Kelsay Books released her collection, Washed by a Summer Rain: Poems from the Desert.. She has two new collections published in 2024: On Horsebarn Hill: Poems (Kelsay Books) is a collection of poetry reflecting the first nine years of the author's life spent in a farm house on the edge of the University of Connecticut campus. Thread: A Memoir in Woven Poems (FInishing Line Press) consists of poetry/prose hybrids which are presented as a memoir.
