Janis Kearney served as personal diarist to President Bill Clinton from 1995-2001, in the first such Presidential appointment of its kind. Prior to serving as Director of Minority Media Outreach for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and then joining the Clinton administration in 1993 as Director of Public Affairs and Communication for the U.S. Small Business Administration, she was publisher of the Arkansas State Press Newspaper, formerly owned by civil rights activist Daisy Bates. Kearney also wrote a weekly column for the newspaper.

Following her tenure with the Clinton administration, Kearney completed a fellowship at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute, where she researched and began writing a book about black America's view of President Clinton's race legacy, Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton . . . From Hope to Harlem. She is also currently at work on a memoir, Cotton Field of Dreams, which chronicles her upbringing in the Arkansas delta as part of a sharecropping family.

As a Visiting Fellow of the Humanities Center, Kearney will work toward the completion of both books and will collaborate with the Humanities Center on a public event devoted to literacy, creative writing, and history. As mentioned, she will also be available to visit DePaul classes and meet with faculty and student groups. If you are interested in arranging a meeting with Janis Kearney, please contact her by email at jkearne3@depaul.edu.