Janet Beard

Born and raised in East Tennessee, Janet Beard moved to New York to study screenwriting at NYU and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from The New School. Her first novel, Beneath the Pines, was published in 2008, and her follow-up, The Atomic City Girls became an international bestseller 2018. Janet's latest novel, The Ballad of Laurel Springs, was released in 2021. Janet has lived and worked in Australia, England, Boston, and Columbus, Ohio, where she is currently raising a daughter and working on a new novel. She is the recipient of a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Fiction.