JANET STERNBURG
Born: Boston, MA.
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Education: The New School for Social Research, B.A. Philosophy, 1967
BOOKS
OVERSPILLING WORLD: The Photographs of Janet Sternburg
Distanz Verlag, 2016
WHITE MATTER: A Memoir of Family and Medicine.
Hawthorne Books, 2015.
PHANTOM LIMB: A Meditation on Memory. PB reissue,
Foreverland Press, 2015.
PHANTOM LIMB: A Meditation on Memory. E-book,
Foreverland Press, 2014.
OPTIC NERVE: Photopoems.
Red Hen Press, 2005.
PHANTOM LIMB: A Memoir.
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, American Lives Series, ed. Tobias Wolff, 2002; paperback edition, 2003.
THE WRITER ON HER WORK, VOLUME I.
W. W. Norton, 1980. Twentieth Anniversary edition, W.W. Norton, 2000.
Continuously in print for 35 years.
THE WRITER ON HER WORK, COMBINED EDITION.
London: Virago Press, 1991.
THE WRITER ON HER WORK, VOLUME 2.
W. W. Norton, 1991.
Continuously in print for 25 years. Selected for “500 Great Books by Women.”
ESSAYS AND JOURNALISM
Anthologies and Journals (selected)
2015: “What if Aunt Francie Had Lived in Belgium.” MEDIUM: Human Parts series.
2012–15: Times Quotidian, regular contributor writing on the relationship between words and images.
2010: “The Consciousness of a Community and Beyond.” Co-writer. “Introduction to Spanish edition of “Zoot Suit,” commissioned by the American Embassy in Mexico.”
2008: “An Instant Classic: Oprah’s Private Library,” Cover story based on interview with Oprah Winfrey, O at Home, vol. 5, no. 3, Fall.
2008: “Oprah’s Secret Garden,” Cover story, O at Home, vol. 5, no. 1, Spring.
2003: “A Writer Snaps.” Teachers & Writers, vol. 35, no. 2.
2002: “A Writer’s Need to See.” Art Journal, vol. 61, no. 1.
2000: “Twenty Years After: Looking Back on ‘The Writer on Her Work.’” The Women’s Review of Books, vol. xviii, no. 2. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary edition of book.
1999: “The Scan Chronicles.” Living on the Margins, New York: Persea Books.
1999: “Without the Wig.” Culturefront vol. 8, no. 1.
1998: “Long Exposures: A Poetics of Film and History.” Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History. Praeger, Westport, Connecticut and London.
1998: “Why Iran? They Said: A Tourist in Iran.” The Earth Times, November 16-30.
1997: “Trochaic.” “His Regular Fare.” The Prairie Schooner, vol. 71, no.1, 1997.
1994: “Long Exposures, A Poetics of Film and History.” Common Knowledge, vol. 3, no.1.
1993: “Farewell to the Farm.” Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write aboutTheir Work on Women. Beacon Press, Boston: 1984. Reissued, New York and London: Routledge Press.
1992: “Views from an Unstable Landscape.” Catalogue for ReMapping Culture(s), New York City: Whitney Museum of American Art, April/May
1992: “This Writer on Her Work.” Cover Story, Poets & Writers, vol.30, issue 3, 1992. Reprinted in Culturefront, vol. 1, no. 2.
1987: “A Blank for New Things.” The Arts for Television, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
1985: “Women and Poetry.” The Poetry Review, Issue no.5.
1981: “Inside the Room of the Woman Poet.” Guest editor, The Poetry Society of America Bulletin, vol. lxxi.
POETRY
Selected journals
2012: “The Dreamer,” Black Clock, no. 15.
2006: “Song of Tom.” Black Clock, no. 6.
2005: “Narrative, After Bunuel.” Black Clock, no. 4.
1999: “Natura Morta.” Cargo: Beyond Exile, no. 17/18.
1982: “I Only Have One.” Bookmark commissioned by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority for National Poetry Month.
1982: “Stones.” “Encyclopedia.” “The Traces.” Response, no. 43.
1980: “Tea.” The Niagara Magazine, no. 12/13.
1979-80: “Vitalie.” “An Aria on the Footstool.” Sun, vol. iv, no.3.
1978: “The Facts of Life.” “At My House.” “Vitalie.” “My Mother’s Breakfront.” Ordinary Women/Mujeres Comunes: an anthology of poetry by New York City women. New York: Ordinary Women Press.
1975: “Thomas Eakins.” “The Childless Woman.” “Work Song.” “The Dreamer.” “At That Moment.” “Chimera.” “You Taught Me Howto Take a Shower.” “At my House.” “An Aria on the Footstool.” Letters Stacked to Be Mailed: Four New Poets. New York City: Saturday Press
WRITING FOR THEATER and FILM
2015-16: The Fifth String (playwright): productions in Los Angeles and New York. A play crossing time and space, bringing together Andalusia before 1492 with our own time of expulsions and diasporas.
2012: The Fifth String (playwright): staged reading, La Mama, New York City.
2011: The Fifth String (playwright): fellowship, workshop, staged reading, PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany.
2008: The Fifth String. Staged reading in Berlin.
1990: Through Her Eyes. Writer and curator: a 13-part television series of independent films made by women, with Lee Grant, undertaken at the behest of The John D. and Catherine R. MacArthur Foundation, The Learning Channel, National Broadcast.
1987: Likely Stories. Writer and curator: a 13-part television series of independent fiction films, with Glenn Close, undertaken at the behest of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Learning Channel, National Broadcast.
1986: Thomas Eakins: A Motion Portrait. Co-writer. PBS American Masters, National Broadcast.
1984: Cultivating Paradise. Co-writer with the Shared Forms Theatre. Produced at Common Ground Theater, New York City.
1976: What the Woman Lived: Louise Bogan in her Letters and Poems. Co-writer. Produced at the Manhattan Theatre Club featuring Marian Seldes and Kathryn Walker, New York City.
1972: Virginia Woolf: The Moment Whole, with Marian Seldes. Producer, director, NET, National Broadcast.
1971: El Teatro Campesino. Writer, Co-producer, NET, National Broadcast, and screened at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
TEACHING AND PRESENTATIONS
1980 – CURRENT
Courses, readings, presentations, keynote speaker, lectures at universities, museums, literary centers, cultural institutions, on radio (NPR et al.) and television (commercial and public), throughout the United States and internationally. Chair, conferences and panels.
Selected:
2005: Reading and lecture tour throughout Germany sponsored by the American Embassy; e.g., to the Universities of Hamburg, Nuremberg, Deutsche Haus, Heidelberg.
2003: Getty Research Center /Stanford Center for Behavioral Studies. Lecture on “Pathways between Memoir and Neurology” at invitational symposium, “Brain, Cognition, Art.”
1990-2004
California Institute of the Arts. Courses: Thinking and Feeling: interdisciplinary course on new findings in neurology and how they relate to art practices; also, Writing the Personal, on memoir.
1990-1994
Metropolitan Museum and Getty Trust: Program for Art on Film. Consultant, interviewing art historians (Sir Ernst Gombrich, et al.), filmmakers (Richard P. Rogers, et al.), and artists (David Hockney, et al.) on how art translates into moving images.
1993: The Bellagio Center of The Rockefeller Center. Co-director, international symposium, “Curating Across Cultures.”
1976-1985
Graduate Media Studies, The New School University. Courses: Creative Process in Media; also, Autobiography in Film, Video, Literature and the Visual Arts.
FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, HONORS,
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Artist Residencies, 1974 – 2012 at: Pact Zollverein, Essen; The MacDowell Colony; The Millay Colony; Blue Mountain Artist Residency; Dale Djerassi Fellow at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program
Member of the Board, PEN USA, 1988-2002; former Vice President and Chair, Literary Awards; currently National Advisory Committee
Member of the Visiting Committee, Antioch College CA
Levantine Cultural Center, National Advisory Council
The Rockefeller Foundation, Senior Program Advisor in Media 1988 – 1995
New York Council for the Humanities, Senior Program Office: National Endowment for the Humanities
Exemplary Award for ‘Film and the Humanities.’ 1980 – 1987
National Endowment for the Humanities: Scriptwriting and Travel Fellowship, 1981, for film on
Virginia Woolf
Director, Writers in Performance at the Manhattan Theatre Club, 1971-80; produced and directed pioneering literary series: events included presentations of the work of S. J. Perelman, Raymond Chandler, Italo Calvino, others.
Producer, Cultural Affairs Division, National Educational Television (NET) 1967 – 1972
The Utne Reader: 2003 Selected as one of 40 creators in the United States and Europe, in all disciplines, described as “innovative, . . {with} depth, resonance . . full of ideas and insights that challenge us to live more fully.”