JANET STERNBURG's books include Optic Nerve: Photopoems (Red Hen Press, 2005); the memoir, Phantom Limb: A Meditation on Memory (ebook, Foreverland Press, 2013, hardcover and paperback University of Nebraska American Lives Series, 2001 and 2002); and the classic two volumes of The Writer on Her Work (W.W. Norton, 1980 Volume 1; 1990 Volume 2 hardcover and paperback in multiple editions, Twentieth Anniversity Edition 2000), the first book ever on what it means to be a woman who writes (commissioned essays), described as ‘groundbreaking . . a landmark.'
Her work in theatre and film has included Director of Writers in Performance at the Manhattan Theatre Club (1971-80); her award-winning films (Director/Producer) for national public television include Virginia Woolf: The Moment Whole, and El Teatro Campesino; her plays (playwright) include Colette with Stockard Channing, and Louise Bogan What the Woman Lived with Marian Seldes; her new play The Fifth String was produced in Berlin, Essen, and this May, 2012 at New York’s La Mama Theater.
In 1998, Sternburg picked up a camera and began another life as a photographer. Her work has now been shown at museums and galleries around the world, with solo shows in Berlin, Munich, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico, and Korea where she was commissioned by The Seoul Institute of the Arts to create a full-building installation. Her work is widely collected and has been acquired by museums. Portfolios of her work have been published in Aperture and Art Journal.
Her honors include fellowships and residencies, among them from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Embassy in Berlin, The MacDowell Colony, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Programs. She is one of forty artists from around the world selected by The Utne Reader as 'movers and shakers. . . whose art will change the world . . . full of ideas and insights that challenge us to live more fully.‘ She is married to Steven D. Lavine, President of the California Institute of the Arts, traveling worldwide with him on behalf of the Institute and serving as partner on many ventures.
