The author vacationing in Las Vegas, February 2012.
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Walker's LATEST Thoughts About
Sexuality and Christianity in Her Fiction
“When I wrote Grace and my two other long works of fiction, one of the themes I explored in depth is same-sexuality in women. I had little choice in the matter; it came from my writer's well of experience. However, now, though I still love my characters, I am not a proponent of that orientation or lifestyle; I am not aboard the same-sex agenda that has swept our nation -- because I think the movement is designed not to help individuals but to defy God. No matter how we enter this world, no matter what compositions we might have inherited in our fallen state, we are obligated to think and live in a manner that obeys and pleases God. I have decided to do that in my own life -- despite anything that I have done or have written in the past.”
- Article by TTBAgency, June 2021
Chad "Sky" Walker
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(Photo by Nita Wiggins)
The editors at Montmartre.
The Co-Editors
What the author saw from the window of a fourth-floor home in Porte Saint-Denis in Paris, France, in the spring of 2019.
The author in France in April 2019, addressing Nita's university journalism students in Lille,
near the Belgium border.
Walker at Place de la Concorde (pictured below), the site where 1,200 members of the upper class were executed by guillotine during the French Revolution. The area is now an attractive and spacious town square.
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(Photo by Chozi Nguni)
Texas Tomboy and Georgia Peach
The author pictured below with
Merry Biteye, daughter of a Senegalese diplomat, after a fundraiser in a Paris suburb (on Miss Walker's birthday in April 2019) at which she was featured speaker.
(Umbrella photo by Nita Wiggins)
The author in March and May 2018, living a dual life as lady editor and tomboy trucker.
THE AUTHOR
The Author's Life
Janet Marie Walker loves the broad open spaces of Texas as much as she loves the meadows and magnolias of Georgia. Born in one state and raised in the other, she is the fifth of eight children born to William and Marie Walker of Charleston, South Carolina. As a youth, Miss Walker enjoyed reading novels, playing sports, visiting the public library, and studying the Bible literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
WORK AND EDUCATION
After graduating from A.R. Johnson Health Professions High School in Augusta, Georgia, Miss Walker held jobs as newspaper reporter and copy editor, TV associate producer, intern for a New York City publishing house, UPS package handler, and cross-country truck driver. She once struggled as a welfare mother and worked one summer on the housekeeping staff at the Cable News Network (CNN) headquarters in Atlanta.
Miss Walker studied communications and creative writing at Augusta State University, where she received the Walter Wiggins-James Lott Communications Scholarship, the Samantha Dawes Wich Scholarship for Creative Writing, and the Will Shingleton Creative Writing Scholarship. At Georgia State University in Atlanta, she studied rhetoric and composition, as well as African American Studies, and performed literary research as a Ronald McNair Scholar.
PUBLISHED WORKS
Journalism and Work For Hire
Miss Walker's first job in journalism was writing obituaries for The Augusta Chronicle and the Augusta Herald, the city's daily newspapers, a position that taught her Associated Press Style and increased her typing speed from 30 to 80 words a minute. She wrote 100 newspaper articles and editorials for small local newspapers (primarily, the Augusta Focus), including an interview with her favorite writer, acclaimed novelist Gloria Naylor (Mama Day, The Women of Brewster Place).
In 1991, before college, Miss Walker became founding editor of Candace (kan-DAY-see), a regional feminism-and-fashion magazine patterned after Essence and the first publication of its kind in the Augusta area. (Because of financial difficulties, the magazine lasted only briefly.) In 1994, she received top guest-editorial spot in The New York Amsterdam News for a racial analysis of Disney’s movie The Lion King, and her feminist critique, “The Disney Girl,” appeared in the St. Martin’s Press college text The Great American Bologna Festival and Other Student Essays, 1994-1996 editions. For two years, she wrote fictional stories about the Imani doll for Olmec Toys, a company founded by businesswoman Yla Eason and once the nation's largest producer of ethnic dolls. The stories were designed into booklets that sold with the dolls.
Fiction
Miss Walker is the author of the three-book novel Amazed By Her Grace, first released on December 12, 2012, as an e-book and revised and re-published in 2015; Desire of Ovid's Mother, a three-act stage play released as an e-book in 2013 and again in 2015; and a controversial novel (with explicit content and no longer in print) published in 2010 under a pseudonym. The themes that drive Miss Walker's fiction are social taboos, the power of religion, class differences among African Americans, and the complex nature of female sexuality.
Non-Fiction
Miss Walker is the author of What You Didn't Learn in Trucking School: The Trucker's Little Book of Etiquette (Word Garden Publishing, 2020), a frank and delightful pocket guide that offers practical advice and etiquette tips for truck drivers. The book debuted with best-seller ranking in several Amazon.com categories. She has published two books of social commentary and has transcribed her 28-year private diary into 14 small books, yet to be published.
Miss Walker also served as line editor for Civil Rights Baby: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism (Listen To Others Publishing, 2021), a memoir written by American broadcaster-turned-France professor Nita Wiggins, who, like Miss Walker, grew up in Augusta, Georgia.
DREAMS and SATISFACTION
Miss Walker declares herself retired from editing for others, making an exception only to co-edit with her transcontinental writing partner, Miss Wiggins. The author spends most of her time living on the highways of America through her trucking employer. During her long drives, she listens to audio lessons about various topics, including grammar, the French language, Bible history, and Christian apologetics. She also enjoys old radio dramas, music of various genres, and well-written, well-voiced audiobooks. She savors the life of a highway cowgirl and believes that only family obligations will remove her from the peace and freedom the lifestyle affords. She has a son named Chad Niger (wrestler Chad "Sky" Walker, pictured below) and a granddaughter that she loves dearly.