Photo: David Albanese
A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Janie Dempsey Watts has strong roots there and in Ringgold, Georgia where she spent much of her childhood on horseback. She holds journalism degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Southern California. She has written for newspapers, magazines and television and also authored five screenplays. Her essays have been published in Christian Science Monitor, Guideposts magazine, several Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Georgia Backroads magazine, and on boomerwomenspeak.com. She is a columnist for "Catoosa Life Magazine."
Her current emphasis is fiction. Two of her short stories were honored as finalist and semi-finalist by the William Faulkner Pirate's Alley Creative Writing Contest. She also authored a novel, Moon Over Taylor's Ridge, set in California and northwest Georgia. She is currently seeking a publisher for this novel, and is at work on a second novel set in the South.
She presented her short story, "Backyard Messages," at the 2009 Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College in Rome, Georgia.
Another short story, "Under Milkweed Leaves," was published in the January 2010 issue of Southern Women's Review. The April, 2010, issue of Blue Crow Magazine featured her short story, "Hiatus."
