Janet Sternburg

Janet Sternburg (born January 18, 1943) is an American writer of essays, poetry and memoir, as well as a fine art photographer. Sternburg is the editor of The Writer On Her Work, the first book of commissioned essays on what it means to be a contemporary woman who writes. It has been continuously in print since 1980, and a twentieth anniversary edition was published by W.W. Norton in 2000. Sternburg lives in Los Angeles and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her most recent book is White Matter: A Memoir of Family and Medicine. She is married to Steven Lavine.

Sternburg was raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She studied at the New School for Social Research, graduating in 1967 with a B.A. degree in philosophy.

Sternburg first worked at NET, the national educational television service where, in 1969, she produced a feature-length documentary, El Teatro Campesino, on the Chicano theatre troupe that had performed in the agricultural fields of central California in support of the farm workers strike led by Cesar Chavez. The film was broadcast on public television.

In the early 1970s Sternburg turned her attention to the confluence of women and creativity, a shift in direction that influenced the rest of her professional life. She conceived, commissioned and edited a compendium of contemporary and diverse female voices, The Writer On Her Work (1980). A sequel to The Writer On Her Work, subtitled New Essays In New Territories, was published in 1991. For this second volume Sternburg commissioned essays from women around the world. Poets & Writers magazine devoted a cover story to both books, calling them “landmarks.” The second book was selected for 500 Great Books by Women.

Interest in Virginia Woolf’s novels and essays led Sternburg to produce, co-direct and write the short film, Virginia Woolf: The Moment Whole, featuring Marian Seldes as Woolf. In an interview Sternburg said, “Woolf’s work has a powerful sense of experience in the world. I felt that the person who had written her novels could not have been the ethereal creature that many people have imagined.” The Woolf film was broadcast on public television.

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