Today we’d like to introduce you to Janell Strube.
Hi Janell, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am a poet, memoirist and author. I’m also a tax executive who has spent years in the hospitality industry and now I help create structure and drive administrative change at Starwood Hotels. But I’ve been writing since I was three – telling the story of what happened to me because I was adopted, but it took me a very long time to return to the themes of that story that went in the trash as scribbles on a notebook when I was a child. Throughout high school, I wrote, but in college, suddenly I felt like I had no experience and nothing to say about the world. I stopped writing. Or so I thought. I say this, because there are at least one hundred blank books filled with all kinds of writing – about marriage breaking down, infertility, hurricanes destroying a house, the toad who came to dinner, and thousands of thoughts. I was really writing in secret as I went about my day life being a tax accountant, executive, and single mother. In my forties, I couldn’t deny it anymore – I had to write. I began taking creative writing classes to bring some kind of organized time to my writing outside the chaos of raising kids, travelling for work. Somehow, in all of that, two and a half manuscripts and hundreds of poems took shape, and this year, I published my first novel, Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution. The story of my life goes something like this – biracial adoptee tax executive writes an award-winning novel about an erased female artist of the French Revolution. And of course, I have plenty to say. I have a memoir about adoption and searching for connection in the works, and another novel in the making.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely not smooth! By nature, I am a memoirist. As an adoptee, that can be threatening both in the family of adoption and the birth family. A lot of people would prefer to believe in the myth of adoption, not the facts. But when I began writing about it, I got a lot of push back on my views. So, I did what any good tax (or forensic) accountant would do. Read everything, follow the facts, document everything. This was the same way I approached writing Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution. One of the most important promises of historical fiction is to be accurate to the times. For me, I felt I needed to study the entire world around Adelaide – everything that was happening politically, socially, among the royals, among the bourgeois, with the weather, with fashion. This brings the authenticity to the novel that makes you feel like you are walking the streets of Paris.
But there was an underlying problem, and that was the lack of belief in myself. In my family and among my friends, a lot of people, including those the very closest to me, felt that I was wasting my time. I also felt like perhaps I had started too late, or that no one would like what I was called to write. I had to realize that Adélaïde was calling, I was driven to her story, and that my voice, and her story, needed to be heard. I am not a perfectionist, but in all of life, I have a habit of coming 100% prepared, 100% ready for a test, and feeling like my book was 100% ready did hold me back, but I am glad for pushing through all that struggle. Today I recognize that I have definitely spent my 10,000 hours writing, I’ve attended many writing conferences and classes, I’ve learned that I can take my work to trusted people to read and critique and I’ve also learned that sometimes things need to bake – they take a while, because that’s when the good writing comes. And I’ve learned to trust myself in this and to know that every day, I can grow in my craft, and to faith in the path I’m taking as a writer, no matter how snarled, tangled or obscure it sometimes feels.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I specialize in writing about adoption, complexity in relationships, erasure of people. This is how I can write about adoption and its losses, and about a woman who was disappeared from history. I am so proud to bring her back into the spotlight.
I write poetry, memoir and fiction and I think that being able to cross genres and use elements of poetry in my fiction and memoir, and using lived experience to embody the feelings of characters in my fiction, makes my work impactful and authentic. Often, I wrap a tough message in beautiful words – like a pearl covering the pain of a grain of sand.
I’m really proud of creating a book that has been critically received and loved by the people who read it, even when they tell me that they want to throw it against the wall or it took them forever to read it because they kept fact checking me, but they still couldn’t stop turning the page.
You will always know my poetry, memoir and fiction by the use of color, light, sky and trees in my works. You can read my work, whether poetry or prose at many levels – there is the on its face meaning, but then there are deeper layers and references that if you know, you know, or you’ll catch it. Sort of like hiding hidden figures in a painting but doing it with words.
I also have a very particular view about what I do. I love to cook and entertain, and I love to write. One feeds the body, the other nourishes the soul.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I would have loved to have been a painter or a dancer – but today I use words as a palette and the meter of words as movement.
Pricing:
- E-book $9.99
- Paperback $18.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://janellstrube.com/
- Instagram: @janellstrube
- Facebook: Janell Strube, Author
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janell-strube-a9b19916
- Other: https://janellstrube.substack.com/
