Janet Hurley has been writing since she was in first grade ( she titled her first story The Eye!). She received her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has a BA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill , where she completed the honors program in creative writing. She's a frequent contributor to VERVE Magazine. and Our State Magazine.
Janet has collaborated with the Thomas Wolfe Memorial site to offer writing camps and afterschool classes since June 2008. She also works with other homeschool groups, private schools, and organizations.
Janet has a long history of working with young people in addition to her True Ink programs. She has volunteered with young writers from kindergarten through fifth grade in Asheville, Chapel Hill, NC Athens, GA, and New Paltz, NY. While living in the Piedmont of North Carolina in the the early nineties, she worked with award winning poet and playwright Jaki Shelton Green to develop and co-facilitate a writing program for the Cedar Grove Head Start program as part of a North Carolina Arts and Education grant. Janet 's experience with young people includes directing and facilitating youth leadership programs for The Center for Peace Education based in Carrboro, N.C. and for Rites of Passage in Athens, Georgia. In 1994, she directed the Haw River Festival, an environmental education program serving over 2000 fourth grade children.
Also a storyteller, Janet has performed in elementary school classrooms in Asheville, Chapel Hill, Athens, Georgia and New Paltz, New York. In 1994, she performed for hundreds of children along the Hudson River as the resident storyteller for the Pumpkin Festival, a Clear Water Sloop environmental education program. In the early nineties, she also co-founded The Far Fetchers and True Tellers, a Chapel Hill based storytelling performance group.
Janet lives in Asheville with her husband, David, two children, Maren and Liam, and dog, Cody.