Elder Skelter. (poems and essays). Lamar University Press, 2024. 88 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and AbeBooks.

The Wonder Is: New and Selected Poems 1974-2012. Second edition. Ink Brush Press, 2012. 205 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or AbeBooks.

Thirty plus years' worth of poems deserves a hurrah. Some—notably 'Diana the Huntress Goes for her Mammogram' and 'I Cut Open a Papaya / My Husband Reads His UFO Journal' —are especially delightful in their transgression of our daily norms.

—Maxine Kumin,
winner of the Nobel Prize

A Lifetime of Words. (prose) Lamar University Literary Press, 2020. 225 pages. Available from powells.com, barnesandnoble.com, Amazon.com, or AbeBooks.

Jan Seale’s journey in language has produced here a miscellany of observations, how-to’s, examples, and anecdotes by one who has spent six decades writing and teaching the art of writing. From “Frightening Words” to “Five Versions of a Poem,” from “Babysitting the Imagination” to “Porch Light Titles,” this collection offers practical words to the novice writer as well as an excellent resource for creative writing courses.

Particulars: poems of smallness. Lamar University Literary Press, 2021. 132 pages. Illustrations by Ansen Seale. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or AbeBooks.

In this volume, Jan Seale contemplates small things. Think peppercorns, straight pins, freckles. Think fingernails, commas, stamps. These objects have their own raison d'etre. Here are the small sublime, the Lilliputian laughable, the diminuitive dear. Their essence and standing may be important beyond our or their knowing.

The Parkinson Poems. Lamar University Press, 2013. 82 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or AbeBooks.

Parkinson's disease and poetry square off in this volume written from the perspectives of a caregiver and her husband. The poems spell out the vicissitudes of dealing with this so-far incurable neurological condition, from onset through progression and treatment to final simple toleration.

Jan Seale: New and Selected Poems. Texas Christian University Press, 2013. 96 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or AbeBooks.

Reading through, I was struck both at the evolution of style (from a more removed observer’s impressionistic retooling of the everyday to a warmer and bemused voice wholly engaged in the happenings) and at the unbroken thread of genuine wonder at the world, an unfolding of its little miracles with deft, certain metaphors.

—David Bowles
The Monitor

Appearances. (short fiction) Lamar University Press, 2012. 159 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or Abe Books.

Jan Seale's capable evocation of peculiar personalities mixes with her sense of nostalgia and richly drawn places to create an ambiance of the extraordinary in the most commonplace of circumstances. Her characters are a delightful collection of people bewildered by life and haunted by memory but who also find themselves relying on the confidence of experience and the solidity of conviction to press on, no matter what. This is a delightful collection of insightful vignettes that remind us how human and vulnerable we all are, how wrong we often can be, and how, in the long run, it's the integrity of our intentions that makes all the difference.

—Clay Reynolds
The Dallas Morning News

Ordinary Charms. (essays) Lamar University Literary Press, 2017. 163 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or AbeBooks.

In this collection of short essays, 30 years accruing, Jan Seale takes on everything from student bloopers to sparrows, navel-gazing to needles, silkworms to Southern sayings. Her words, sprinkled with wit and soul, suggest that our ordinary world is rife with meaning, there for our simple notice with lament or celebration. Life itself is the magician.

Nape. Poems on the nature of Spirit. Ink Brush Press, 2011. 96 pages. Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or Abe Books.

As the nape connects the head to the body, Seale's flawlessly crafted poems connect spiritual contemplation to the senses in a seamless, quiet ecstasy.

—Larry D. Thomas
2008 Texas Poet Laureate

Nature Nurture Neither: A Family's Journey in Creativity. (prose) Angelina River Press, 2014. 185 pages.
Available from Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, or Abe Books.

Is it genes, or environment, or something else that causes a child to select one of the arts as a life's work? What are the odds that the offspring of a musician and a poet will be artists? One family's creative passage shines a light on the deliberate and incidental ways in which all five came to be involved in music, literature, and visual art. This family autobiography is unscientific, anecdotal, and entertaining—in the best tradition of memoirs.

Airlift. (short fiction) Texas Christian University Press, 1992. 174 pages. Out of print. Copies possibly available from powells.com or AbeBooks.

These individualistic voices do much to give each story its own flavor, develop setting and mood, and make the characters as familiar as the reader’s next door neighbor.

—Gabriel Stauf
Texas Books in Review

The Yin of It. (poems on stages in a woman’s life) Pecan Grove Press, 2000. 40 pages. Out of print. Copies possibly available from powells.com, or AbeBooks.

The poems can be gentle, funny, in your face, zany, sensuous, ripe and touching.

—Judy Bowen
The Mesquite Review

The Nuts-&-Bolts Guide to Writing Your Life Story. The Knowing Press, 1998. 335 pages. Out of print. New and used copies possibly available from Amazon or other booksellers.

Nuts and Bolts is an indispensable tool for getting your story written.

—Eileen Mattei
Valley Morning Star

Valley Ark: Life Along the Rio. (poems and photos) Ansen Seale, photographer. The Knowing Press, 2005. 108 pages. Out of print. New and used copies possibly available from Amazon or other booksellers.

Her sharp, whittled poems, plus the photos that look as elegant as oil paintings, complement each other superbly.

—Jim McKone
The McAllen Monitor

Homeland: Essays Beside and Beyond the Rio Grande. New Santander Press, 1995. 146 pages. Out of print. New and used copies possibly available from Amazon or other booksellers.

Homeland is a charmer whose message will stick with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

—Judyth Rigler
San Antonio Express-News

A Family for Schuster. (children's, ages 2-7) illustrations by Bernice Coleman. The Knowing Press, 2023. Paperback or hard-bound copies. 32 pages. New and used copies possibly available from Amazon or other booksellers.

Schuster the mouse accidentally loses his family. Archibald the turtle befriends him. Themes of loss, friendship, and environmental care make A Family for Schuster an important addition to a school or home library.