photography by Terry Lorant
Janine Kovac
is a metaphorical juggler. A former professional ballet dancer who danced in Iceland, Italy, San Francisco, and her hometown of El Paso, Texas, 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.
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. Her thesis provided the scientific foundation for Janine’s first book Brain Changer: A Mother’s Guide to Cognitive Science, which chronicles her experience as the mother of twins born nearly four months before they were due. Janine tells the same story from her perspective as a ballet dancer in her memoir SPINNING: Choreography for Coming Home. Spinning was a semi-finalist for Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize and the memoir winner of the National Indie Excellence Awards.
Her writing has been anthologized in What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories About Premature Birth; Mamas Write: 29 Tales of Truth, Wit, and Grit; Multiples Illuminated: A Collection of Stories and Advice from Parents of Twins, Triplets, and More and Nothing But the Truth: 51 Women Reveal the Power of Positive Female Connection.
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, and MacDowell. Her writing awards 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. Her second memoir THE NUTCRACKER CHRONICLES: A Fairytale Memoir will be published by She Writes Press in October of 2024.
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!
