Janine Joseph is a formerly undocumented poet and librettist from the Philippines. She is the author of Decade of the Brain  and Driving without a License, winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize and da Vinci Eye award, finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, and named an Honorable Mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. She is a;sp co-editor of Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial, 2024). Her poetry, essays, and critical writings have appeared in numerous publications, including Newsweek, The Nation, The Atlantic, Orion, Poets & Writers, Poem-a-Day, and the Smithsonian’s “What It Means to Be American” project. Her commissioned works for Symphony New Hampshire, Washington Master Chorale, and the Houston Grand Opera include Extraordinary Motion: Concerto for Electric Harp, The Art of Our Healers, What Wings They Were, On This Muddy Water, and From My Mother’s Mother. Since 2016, she has organized for Undocupoets, a nonprofit literary organization that advocates for poets who are currently or who were formally undocumented in the U.S. A recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Bread Loaf, she is also a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. Janine is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech. Learn more at www.janinejoseph.com

“…The book itself is no chore: It stands far apart from most first books, and from most books of autobiographical or narrative poetry, for the unpredictable vigor in its rhythmically irregular lines, especially in its depictions of youthful adventures.”
—The Los Angeles Times

“Driving without a License is political and virtuosic while maintaining a witty and down-to-earth voice, and the finely wrought tension between these modes creates a uniquely energized poetry.”
—Kenyon Review

“The book includes text from naturalization forms and newspaper articles about immigration, plays with multiple forms and lays claim to each. While the speaker is hiding in plain sight, the book is a ‘coming out’ that doesn’t shy away from its politics.”
—Matthew Salesses, VICE

“Propelled by the topic of immigration and filled with heartbreaking relevance, the book still manages to treat the subject with a unique sense of humor that feels wholly appropriate. Courage and a side-glancing wit unite, making Joseph’s collection a necessity.”
—Steve Fellner, Rain Taxi

“Driving without a License is a collection about belonging and un-belonging, about growing up in a culture that says you’re welcome here (generally), yet enables governmental structures designed to alienate and remove you.”
—E. CE Miller, Bustle Magazine

“Though the political suffuses these poems, they are also personal, funny, irreverent and playful…These are inviting, personable poems with sharp points buried in each. A truly entertaining and enlightening first collection.”
—D. A. Powell, Goodreads

“When I first heard [Joseph’s] poems two years ago, I knew how vital they were to the conversations about who can claim American identity. Since then, the scapegoating and outright vitriol directed toward immigrants has only grown, making her debut collection even more essential on anyone’s American poetry shelf.”
—Swati Khurana, The Rumpus

“One has come to expect quality from Alice James Books. The venerable New England cooperative continues to publish the best new female voices while expanding their catalogue in recent years to include men and even more international poets. That expectation of quality has been met and exceeded with Janine Joseph’s Driving without a License, which sluices down hot asphalt, gathering steam in the low air. At times steamy but never foggy (the way some poems repeat the worst excesses of the Imagistes), these poems elucidate rather than obscure.”
—Josh Brewer, The Southeast Review

“We’ve never read a book like Janine Joseph’s Driving Without a License. By “We” I mean all of us. With its ferocious formal range and deep compassion Joseph shows us the world we all live in but often choose to ignore. Here are the lives of mothers and fathers, teenagers and grandparents, all living under the threat of deportation. Here are people making a new home while holding onto the dignity and beauty of the place that they were once from. Joseph is that rare poet who makes a poem that devastates a reader while being entirely free from judgment. These are political poems because simply being alive in the United States is a political act. These are narrative poems because everyone has a story. At the heart of each poem is the lyric, that moment in which there is no separation between ourselves and the world Joseph lets bloom. This makes us citizens of these poems, which is a testament to Joseph’s staggering grace.”
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi

“These poems create a disquieting narrative of American immigration, one in which an undocumented young woman from the Philippines hides in plain sight among the pizza places and schoolyards of Southern California, surrounded by opportunity, risk and threat. Joseph’s sensibility is as psychological as it is political, reminding us that concealment is more than a physical act; it is also a profoundly disruptive emotional and psychological position, one that informs not just the speaker’s sense of the world, but her sense of her self. Brilliantly crafted and intimate, Driving Without a License complicates the narrative of American immigration, creating from it a poetry of beauty and empathy.”
—Kevin Prufer

“Janine Joseph writes with an open and easy intimacy. The language here is at once disruptive and familiar, political and sensual, and tinged by the melancholy of loss and the discomforting radiance of redemption. A strong debut.”
—Chris Abani

“Joseph blends everyday anxieties with deeper ones, avoiding outright reportage for smarter inflection. The tensions of visiting the immigration lawyer’s office, for instance, are seen in the mad drive away. Verdict: A gifted writer’s view on an all-American issue.”
—Library Journal

“Driving Without a License documents the search for what is always hiding right in front of us: a future worth looking forward to.”
—American Microreviews & Interviews