Janis F. Kearney - Journalistic and Publishing Activities

Journalistic and Publishing Activities

In 2001, Janis moved to Chicago, but began a two-year Fellowship at the Harvard University W. E. B. Du Bois Institute of African and African American Studies, where she began writing her Clinton biography, Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton-From Hope to Harlem. She continued her research and writing of Conversations as a visiting fellow at DePaul University. In 2003, she was appointed Chancellor's Lecturer for Chicago City Colleges. During that time Janis also wrote a syndicated column, Politics Is Life, which appeared in African-American newspapers throughout the country. Eventually, Conversations was published in 2006, and features, in part, interviews with more than 100 African-American acquaintances and friends of President Clinton about his legacy. Conversations was Kearney’s second book.

Kearney began working on her first book, Cotton Field of Dreams, in 1977, which focused on her father’s life story. After years of shopping her manuscript at writers’ workshops, she began revising the book to personal memoir, which included vignettes about her father and the rest of the family. She revised the book over the next ten years. Kearney established Writing Our World (WOW) Press in 2004, and published "Cotton Field of Dreams" that same year.

In November 2008, Kearney published her first novel, Onece Upon a Time There Was A Girl: A Murder at Mobile Bay. She also published the second installment of her memoir following Cotton Field: Something to Write Home About: Memories of a Presidential Diarist.