Janaya Martin

Janaya Martin is a Minneapolis poet and mother of three. Between poems, chasing children and amateur gardening, she works in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota and hosts a monthly reading series, Writers Read, at The Coffee Shop Northeast. Janaya had a tumultuous childhood--teenage parents, drug addiction, violence--and uses poetry as a way to reflect on and rewrite her history. Through her work and her reading series she hopes to inspire people to “write it out”, to be authentic and unashamed, and to be wholly present in their lives. Her poems have appeared in Oddball Magazine, The Grief Diaries, The Real Us, AutoAnatta, Juste Milieu and Gyroscope Review. Her first book of poetry, Tiptoe and Whisper, was released in March 2016. She blogs at janayamartin.wordpress.com.