Optic Nerve

Janet Sternburg is a writer of memoir, essays, poetry and plays, as well as a fine-art photographer. She lives and works in Los Angeles and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her books include the memoir Phantom Limb (University of Nebraska Press, American Lives series 2002, pb 2003) and Optic Nerve: Photopoems (Red Hen Press, 2005). She has commissioned and edited the classic two volumes of The Writer on Her Work described as "groundbreaking . . a landmark" by Poets and Writers (W.W. Norton, 1980; Volume 2, 1991, Twentieth anniversary edition, 2000). Her essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies ranging from The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Literature to two cover stories for O at Home: "Oprah's Private Library," and "Oprah's Secret Garden." (2008)

Currently she is a regular contributor to the cultural journal Times Quotidian, writing on the interplay between photography and writing, and writing a third memoir, Gypsy Curiosa, the name of a rose whose colors intensify as it ages.