Ostriker's critical publications include Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic (2000); The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (1997); and Stealing the Language: the Emergence of Women's Poetry in America (1987). Her poetry collections include The Book of Seventy (2009), a National Jewish Book Award winner; The Volcano Sequence (2002); Green Age (1989); The Little Space, Poems Selected and New,  which was nominated for a National Book Award (1998);The Crack in Everything, which won the Paterson Prize and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award and was nominated for the National Book Award (1996); The Imaginary Lover (1986), which won the William Carlos Williams Award; and The Mother/Child Papers (1986).  Professor Ostriker was active in Women's Studies and the Center for the Study of Jewish Life.