Born in Broadway, Virginia, as Martha Jane Turner, to a conservative Mennonite farmer and horse breeder and a Church of the Brethren mother, Jane Rohrer met her husband Warren Rohrer when they were 1940s students at Eastern Mennonite College. During the 1950s, as Warren became a painter, they raised two sons in suburban Philadelphia. Jane's 1970s launch into writing poetry catalyzed a late but flourishing literary career. Her 2002 poetry volume Life After Death (Sheep Meadow Press) prompted Theodore Weiss to ask, Original, wonderful combination of simple direct language and subtle surreal turns of mind . . . a full-fledged poet . . . where has she been all this time?
