photography by Terry Lorant
Janine Kovac
is a metaphorical juggler. A former professional ballet dancer, she has worked as a database architect, a software engineer, a web maven for San Francisco’s literary festival Litquake, and as a ballet teacher and choreographer. Her third book THE NUTCRACKER CHRONICLES: A Fairytale Memoir will be published by She Writes Press in November of 2024.
It all started when..
Janine studied ballet at San Francisco Ballet School, Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and in Ghent, Belgium. She enjoyed a 12-year professional career as a soloist with the National Ballet of Iceland in Reykjavik (Ískenski Dansflokkurinn), ATERBalletto in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, and in her hometown of El Paso, Texas.
After retiring from dance, Janine graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in cognitive science. Her thesis “A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of Parenting” was the recipient of the 2009 Robert J. Glushko Prize for Distinguished Undergraduate Research in Cognitive Science, and became the foundation for her first book, Brain Changer: A Mother’s Guide to Cognitive Science (2016). Her memoir SPINNING: Choreography for Coming Home which chronicled the birth of twins born nearly four months before they were born, was a winner of the National Indie Excellence Awards and a semi-finalist for the 2017 Publishers Weekly's BookLife prize.
Janine has been published in Salon, Writer’s Digest, Publishers Weekly, Mothers Always Write, Redivider, Soundings East, The New Ohio Review, Jet Fuel Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Santa Fe Writers Project. Her writing has been anthologized in several works, most recently in What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories About Premature Birth (2020, Melville House).
Her distinctions include the Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship from Hedgebrook, the Gotham Writers Workshop “Market to Manuscript” BIPOC fellowship, the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, the Calderwood Fellowship for Journalism from MacDowell, and the 2021 New Millennium Writings Award for Nonfiction. In July 2021 Janine received a Courage to Write/Writer of Note grant from the deGroot Foundation to support her novel PROPOSITION. Janine is a three-time scholarship recipient and four-time participant alumna of the Community of Writers and has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, the Mineral School, In Cahoots, WordSpace Studios, Vashon Artist Residency and MacDowell.
Still an avid performer, Janine has appeared at Literary Death Match, Lit Crawl, Beast Crawl, KQED’s Perspectives, and Litquake’s Barely Published. From 2015-2017, Janine directed the San Francisco productions of Listen To Your Mother, a nationwide storytelling series in celebration of motherhood.
In 2017 Janine founded Moxie Road Productions, a consulting company for writers and performers, with fellow writer and Listen To Your Mother director Tarja Parssinen. At Moxie Road she teaches writing classes, produces literary events and hosts writing retreats. Before the pandemic turned everything topsy-turvey, Janine taught GYROTONIC(r) and GYROKINESIS(r) modalities in Oakland and at San Francisco GYROTONIC for Lines Ballet School.
Janine is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas. To learn more or to donate, please visit PROJECT NINER.
About Scrivener
What’s Scrivener?
Scrivener ("See the forest or the trees") is a software program that helps you write, organize, revise, and print just about any writing project you can think of—from novels to screenplays and cookbooks. I've been using Scrivener for my writing projects since 2013 and teaching writers how to use this software since 2014. I can't imagine writing without it.
Why do I teach it?
Here's why I think my classes are so great:
We don't begin at the beginning. My class focuses on how to identify your project's organization needs at any given time and then I teach you how to find those tools in Scrivener
In my experience, people take a class or read a tutorial but then they don't get to apply what they've learned. Then, when it's time to write, they don't want to spend their writing time remembering Scrivener. In my class, we do the organizational work during our time together.
As a programmer, I understand why Scrivener is set up the way it's set up. And as a writer, I get why that's confusing to "normal" people.
I've been using Scrivener to organize my writing projects since 2013. I know my way around.
I've been teaching this class since 2014. I know I can show you what you need to know about Scrivener!
