Penny Harter's most recent books are Still-Water Days and A Prayer the Body Makes (Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press, 2021, 2020) and The Resonance Around Us (Mountains & Rivers Press, 2013). Earlier collections include Recycling Starlight; The Night Marsh; Buried in the Sky; Grandmother's Milk; Turtle Blessing; Lizard Light: Poems from the Earth; and Stages and Views.

With her late husband, William J. Higginson, she is co-author of The Haiku Handbook (Kodansha America), and with him was a co-editor of From Here Press for many years. She is also the author of several chapbooks, including collections of haiku.

Anthologies and journals worldwide have published her work, including X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry (various publishers, 1990 onward); The Unswept Path (White Pine Press); The Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books); Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems (Grayson Books, 2017); Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019); How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (Storey Publishing, 2021); The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy (Storey Publishing 2022), and others. Recent poems have appeared in such journals as The Naugatuck River Review, Persimmon Tree, Rattle, Tiferet, and on Ted Kooser's column American Life in Poetry.

Poems of hers are also included in several craft books, including The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics (Terrapin Book, 2018); The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop (rev. edition, Terrapin Books, 2016); The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop (Terrapin Books, 2016) and in The Strategic Poet (Terrapin Books, 2021); as well as in Wingbeats: Exercises and Practices in Poetry (Dos Gatos Press, 2013). And her essays on teaching Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and William Carlos Williams’ Paterson are featured in books from Poets & Writers, Inc. 

Her awards include three Poetry Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, including the Arnold Gingrich Award; the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, a teaching-poet award from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and two fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In addition, her extended autobiography appears both in Contemporary Authors (Volume 172) and Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series (Volume 28).