Novelist Poet Musician Songwriter Janie Conway Herron comes from a well-known, richly musical Australian family. Growing up in Melbourne with brothers Mic and Jim Conway was pure creative delight. Playing music and songwriting is an exciting and rewarding part of Janie’s life. She has enjoyed performing with numerous bands as well as touring nationally. Janie is currently writing and performing with Jatika, a trio based on love of singing and three part harmony. Following a calling to focus on study, Janie graduated with BA and Masters degrees from the University of Technology Sydney and went on to gain her doctorate in Creative Writing from the University of Western Sydney. With that momentum, Janie spent the next fifteen years, teaching, mentoring students and coordinating the Creative Writing Program at Southern Cross University in the northern rivers area of NSW. Janie’s essays, poems, and short stories have been published in numerous journals and anthologies; her first full-length novel, Beneath the Grace of Clouds, was published in 2010 to great critical acclaim. With creativity and compassion at the centre of her life, Janie has been conducting internationally recognised creative writing workshops with Burmese refugees since 2004. The stories resulting from this project were published in anthologies titled ‘Burma Women’s Voices’.
