Janis Owens

Janis Owens is a novelist, memoirist, folklorist and premier storyteller. She is a native of old Florida, born in Marianna in 1960, the last child and only daughter of an Assembly of God preacher who later became a salesman for the Independent Life Insurance Company. She attended the University of Florida, where she was a student of Harry Crews' Creative Writing Workshop and earned a degree in English with a minor in Southern history. She is the award-winning author of acclaimed novels: My Brother Michael, winner of the Chautauqua South Fiction Award for Best Novel, Myra Sims, The Schooling of Claybird Catts, and her latest, American Ghost (Scribner 2013.) Her essays on Florida life have appeared in the New York Times, Writer's Digest and many other publications. Author Pat Conroy has called her, "one of the finest novelists of our time."