Owens, Janis E(llen) 1960-

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OWENS, Janis E(llen) 1960-

PERSONAL: Born August 25, 1960, in Marianna, FL; daughter of Roy Junior (a preacher and insurance salesman) and Martha (a homemaker; maiden name, Rice) Johnson; married Wendel Ray Owens (a production technician), January 19, 1980; children: Emily Ellen, Abigail Lee, Mary Isabel. Ethnicity: "White." Education: University of Florida, B.A. (English), 1983. Politics: "New Deal Democrat." Religion: "Christian/Pentecostal." Hobbies and other interests: Environmentalism, advocacy for the mental ill and for dyslexia awareness.

ADDRESSES: Home—Newberry, FL. Agent—Joy Harris Agency, 156 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Novelist.

AWARDS, HONORS: Chautauqua South Fiction Award, best novel, 2000, for My Brother Michael.

WRITINGS:

My Brother Michael, Pineapple Press (Englewood, FL), 1997.

Myra Sims, Pineapple Press (Englewood, FL), 1999.

The Schooling of Claybird Catts, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.

ADAPTATIONS: Film rights to My Brother Michael and Myra Sims were sold to Citadel Films.

SIDELIGHTS: Janis E. Owens is the author of three novels in the "Catts" series, centered on a working-class north Florida family. Civil War historian Gabriel Catts narrates My Brother Michael, which begins at a funeral for the title character and delves into a triangle involving the deceased's wife, Myra Sims, whom Gabriel had always loved. In the opinion of a Publishers Weekly reviewer, the prose sometimes tends toward the sentimental, but Owens's "fine writing and the ring of her natural voice will carry readers along like a tale told on a porch on a sultry Southern night."

The second entry in the series, Myra Sims, tells essentially the same story, this time from the woman's point of view. According to a Publishers Weekly contributor, the author's ambitious attempt to refigure her previous tale reveals a few flaws in the narrative; nevertheless, Owens still has "a remarkable talent for touching the heart of a tale and endowing the circumstances of humble lives with dignity." The third novel in the "Catts" series is The Schooling of Claybird Catts. Claybird, the son of Myra and Michael Catts, is trying to get back to his life as usual after the devastating loss of his father when a stranger, his Uncle Gabriel, enters his life. Claybird and Uncle Gabe become best friends and Gabriel begins to fill the hole left by Michael's death until Claybird discovers a family secret that threatens everything he knows and loves.

Owens told CA: "Probably the greatest influence on my writing was my grandmother, who was a poet herself, and one of those wonderful, magical, southern grannies, the kind who put you to bed every night with a story, usually a Bible story, though she also offered Latin and Greek myths. I think she made me understand at an early age two of the greatest aims of literature: to entertain and instruct. My father was a Pentecostal preacher when I was very small (later an insurance salesman), and I grew up sitting in church at least three times a week—and usually more—listening to sermons that were preached Pentecostal-style, with great dramatic renderings of right and wrong and the decline and fall of man, and his possible redemption.

"I'd have to say that my greatest motivation to write is that I'm miserable when I don't, along with a pressing need I have to tell the stories that I grew up with, stories of life in the working-class South, Florida-style, a land that is rapidly changing, disappearing before our very eyes.

"I really consider myself, above all, a storyteller, and my favorite writers are the great lyrical southern writers—Truman Capote and Katherine Anne Porter, Tennessee Williams, James Dickey, and the like—though I also like English novelists and their very crisp manners. Point of fact is: I'll read anything—a cookbook or a newspaper or a grocery list—as long as it's well written."