About

Janay Garrick writes from her grandmother’s pink secretary desk in Colorado. Awarded support from the Kenyon Review, the Community of Writers, and the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Newsweek, Narrative, TriQuarterly, Fourth Genre, Eclectica, and The Fourth River among others. Janay holds an M. A. in Cross-Cultural Studies with a research emphasis in Children at Risk from Fuller Theological Seminary and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University.

Influenced by the poetry of witness and resistance writing, Janay desires her art to speak back to the centers of power. She finds herself returning to stories centered around religion, gender, and power. Writing at the intersection of Heaven and Earth, her work moves among sacred texts, theology and poetry, and the dusty human stories of Earth. Janay’s story and advocacy work have been featured in the New York Times, NPR, Mother Jones, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Reader.

In Janay’s ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, the ACLU and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission wrote amicus briefs on her behalf in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals — together they are fighting for the rights of women and minoritized voices working in religious settings. There are 1.7 million of us.

Currently, Janay is writing her first book, a memoir.