Janet Walker

Background

About Janet Walker

Over the last fifteen years, the writing and editing office of American Janet Walker has been the open spaces outside the window of her 18-wheel truck. In 2020, Walker published her passion project, the pocket guide WHAT YOU DIDN'T LEARN IN TRUCKING SCHOOL: THE TRUCKER'S LITTLE BOOK OF ETIQUETTE. The book nudges the not-so-well-mannered cohorts of Walker's to think twice before tossing a bottle of urine out the truck window or bathing their feet in a sink! Walker derived the etiquette suggestions from her own encounters and from situations other truckers relayed to her. The Texas native, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, has visited all forty-eight contiguous states as a long-haul commercial truck driver. Her entertaining non-fiction book was bulk-ordered by a Florida-based trucking school and by a bus-fleet owner in The Netherlands, who wanted the book's advice for his drivers. Thanks to Walker's formative years in Georgia, fellow Augusta writer Nita Wiggins tabbed Walker to edit her memoir, CIVIL RIGHTS BABY: MY STORY OF RACE, SPORTS, AND BREAKING BARRIERS IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM. The book is in the Carter Center presidential archives in Atlanta. Walker edited 2021's "The Genius of Josephine Baker" essay, the official biography, written by Wiggins, for the Paris gala celebrating the Pantheon inclusion of the singer. As a newspaper reporter, Walker interviewed her favorite novelist, Gloria Naylor (Mama Day, The Women of Brewster Place). Walker's most popular work of fiction is her three-book novel AMAZED BY HER GRACE (April 2015). The themes that drive her fiction are taboos, the power of religion, class differences, and the complex nature of female emotions. Along with her writing and editing, Walker is returning to an early-childhood dream of becoming an English teacher. She is currently evaluating scholarship opportunities that have become available because of a nationwide teacher shortage in the U.S.