Collaboration
Artist Beit Midrash
The Artist Beit Midrash gathers to study Torah and create art in the summer at North Suburban Beth El, Highland Park, Illinois under the leadership of Jane Shapiro and Judith Joseph. Barr's poems, collages, and installations have been shown in five exhibits curated by Judith Joseph.
Barr and ceramicist Judy Solomon have collaborated many times. Their work "Secrets" (at left) will be exhibited at The Art Center of Highland Park March 2020. Her poem "Calling" (see Photo Gallery below) was a collaboration with graphic artist and photographer Sam Bernstein and calligrapher Nessia Frank.
Her poem about Judith Joseph's grandfather "Woodcut of a Field of Wheat" was published in East on Central with Joseph's woodcut (gallery below).
Drama in the Classroom
Barr produced and directed plays—La casa de Bernarda Alba and Un crimen en mi pueblo.—at Lake Forest and Northwestern University with colleagues, David George and Penny Nichols (photo below)
Throughout her career as a Spanish professor Barr brought prominent writers to read their work and give seminars to her students.
- Teresa Porzecanski, winner of Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships
- Ana María Shua , called "The Queen of Flash Fiction" by El País, was a frequent visitor at Lake Forest College . (See gallery below.)
- Antonio Skármeta, winner of Casa de las Américas Prize
- Alicia Steimberg, winner of Premio Planeta Biblioteca del Sur
Deerfield Library Poets
For over a decade Barr has been a member of a weekly community poetry workshop. Along with DLP writers Jackie Harris and MJ Gabrielsen, Barr judges the annual Tenth Dems Poetry and Prose Contest for teens in Waukegan, North Chicago, and Zion.
Two Fathers
Ellen Birkett Morris met Barr's father in a writing group in Louisville, Kentucky. Ellen says she inherited Lois and Lois says she inherited Ellen. Birkett's father wrote mystery novels,and Barr's father wrote legal briefs and poetry and drama after retirement.
Their poem was a prompt for collaborative writing in Poets and Writers.
See Ellen as a baby with her father John Birkett in gallery below.
Photo Gallery
