Former presidential diarist, publisher to speak at GC Library

The Hot Springs Writers League will host Janis F. Kearney as the featured speaker for its monthly meeting from 3-5 p.m. April 8 in the Garland Country Library, 1427 Malvern Ave.

Kearney fell in love with stories at a very young age and credits her late father, who lived to be 107, with inspiring her deep love for writing, books and storytelling. The author, lecturer and memoirist was born in the southeast Arkansas Delta to cotton sharecroppers who raised 17 of their 19 children on Varner Road, just miles from the infamous Cummins Prison Farm, outside Gould.

She graduated from University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, after which she worked for state government, then for Civil Rights legend Daisy Gatson Bates, as managing editor of Arkansas State Press newspaper.

In 1988, she purchased the newspaper, becoming publisher. She ended her career as a newspaper publisher in 1992, taking up presidential politics. After working in the press office of the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign, she moved to Washington, D.C., and served for eight years in the Clinton administration. She spent five of those years as personal diarist to President Clinton -- a role she describes as too amazing for the sharecropper's daughter to have ever imagined.

In 2001, Kearney and her husband, Bob J. Nash, founded Writing our World Publishing (WOW! Press), in Chicago. In 2008, she returned to Arkansas, to spend more time with her elderly father. As of 2014, WOW! had eight books in its catalog, including the critically acclaimed "Cotton Field of Dreams," "Something to Write Home About: Memories of a Presidential Diarist," "Daisy: Between a Rock and a Hard Place" and "Sundays with TJ: 100 Years of Memories on Varner Road."

Kearney has traveled the country speaking about writing, her personal journey and the role of literacy in creating a better world. She was a Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University, a Humanities Fellow at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Humanities Scholar at Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, where she taught memoir writing and presidential history. She has also taught memoir writing seminars and workshops around the country and in the United Kingdom. She now writes, publishes and teaches the monthly "Writing our Lives" memoir writing workshop in Little Rock.

HSWL meetings have no admission fee and anyone interested in learning writing skills, how to publish books and find encouragement from other authors may attend.

Call HSWL President Sylvia Dickey Smith, 762-3819, for more information. For those interested in speaking to the group, call speaker Chairwoman Deborah Phillips-Carroll, 282-1866.

Entertainment on 03/30/2015

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