Janis Owens
Janis Owens is a novelist, memoirist, folklorist and premier storyteller. She is a native of West 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. As a child, her family lived briefly in Louisiana and Mississippi, and then returned to North Florida, where she graduated from the University of Florida, and was a student of Harry Crews’ Creative Writing Workshop. She is the award-winning author of three acclaimed novels: My Brother Michael, winner of the Chautauqua South Fiction Award for Best Novel, Myra Sims, and most recently, The Schooling of Claybird Catts. Her essays 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." Her new book is The Cracker Kitchen: A Cookbook in Celebration of Cornbread-Fed, Down-Home Family Stories and Cuisine. Part-cookbook, part-family memoir, The Cracker Kitchen celebrates the backwoods resilience of a much maligned section of Southern culture: the hapless, toothless Cracker. Janis traces the roots of the word back to its origins and offers a refreshing anthropological exploration of this group of proud, fiercely independent Americans who have a deep love of their families, country, stories and food. Intertwined with their history is the history of her own beloved Cracker family: Grannie, Granddaddy, Uncles and Cousins-in-law, complete with pictures from her family album and many a hilarious family story.
