Gensler, Kinereth D.

Poet, editor, and teacher Kinereth (Dushkin) Gensler was born in New York City in 1922, the daughter of Julia Aronson and Alexander M. Dushkin. Her mother was a dietician and her father a professor of education. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and, from 1934 to 1939, in Jerusalem, where her father taught at Hebrew University. She graduated from the University of Chicago (B.A. 1943) and Columbia University (M.A. 1946). In 1945 she married Walter Gensler, a professor of chemistry; they had three children: Orin, Daniel, and Gail. Gensler taught poetry in workshops for elementary school children in Massachusetts (1971-1975), and was a poetry instructor at the Radcliffe Seminars for more than 20 years, beginning in 1978. She was an editor at Alice James Books (1976-1999), was poet-in-residence at Manhattanville College, and had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation (1981) and at the MacDowell Colony (1982-1983). She was the author of Without Roof (1981) and Journey Fruit (1997), among others, and her work was represented in many anthologies and periodicals. Gensler died in 2005.