Janet Sternburg (born January 18, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American writer of essays, poetry and memoir, as well as a fine art photographer.
Sternburg first worked at NET, the national educational television service where, in 1969, she produced a feature-length documentary, El Teatro Campesino, on the Chicano theatre troupe that had performed in the agricultural fields of central California in support of the farm workers strike led by Cesar Chavez.
"[8] In 1980 she became Senior Program Officer at the New York Council for the Humanities, co-editing a book, Historians and Filmmakers: Toward Collaboration, intended to break barriers between artists and scholars.
[9] From 1988 to 1994 Sternburg served as Senior Program Advisor to The Rockefeller Foundation, fostering intercultural film and video projects and co-curating the exhibition "Re-Mapping Cultures" at the Whitney Museum with John G.
[11] For Sternburg, the experience served as a profound object lesson in the fragility of all things, leading her to write the book Phantom Limb: A Meditation on Memory.
[13] A story of family secrets and mental illness, White Matter spans one hundred years and the lives of five sisters and one brother, interwoven with science and history.
[15] Forbes Magazine suggested that in writing White Matter "Sternburg uses all the skills at her disposal, the sensitivity, precision and lyricism of a poet, the hard edges of a photographer, the intelligence and scholarship of an academic, to plumb the many facets of this story and its legacy on her and her family.
"[16] In 1998, Sternburg began making photographs with disposable cameras, using their technical limitations to see "the layers of time and space that are present in a single moment.
"[17] Her photographs have been exhibited in solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Korea, Mexico, Berlin, Freiburg, Heidelberg and Munich, and are in the collection of The Fisher Museum at the University of Southern California.
[20] In his essay, "The Lyrical View", German cultural critic Joern Jacob Rohwer writes: "[Sternburg's] vision captivates audiences with intellectual and emotional depth, precision of observation, and an unmistakable sense of the moment.