Write Now With Janice Lynn Mather

Who are you?

I’m Janice Lynn Mather, a Bahamian-Canadian based in Vancouver, Canada.

What do you write?

I write for teens and for adults, with a focus on telling the stories of Bahamian girls and women.

The first thing I remember writing was a travel journal after my first trip to England, where my Jamaican-born mother grew up. I was six, and we went for two weeks in the summer. When we got back to The Bahamas, my mother gave me a notebook and suggested I write and draw pictures of what I remembered about the trip. I have no clue what happened to that book, but the act of recording stories stuck with me.

I enjoy telling stories that feel unheard or underheard, using language that is authentic and inviting. I know the feeling of reading a book and seeing a distasteful or harmful depiction of myself. It’s worse than not seeing myself in a book at all. It’s a work in progress, but my intent is to create stories with real people, and that feel like a mirror, not like a door slamming shut in any reader’s face.

I absolutely do love writing. I get huge satisfaction from connecting with a character, allowing their experiences to shine through, capturing a part of their life journey, and then exiting the story at the right moment, when they’re settled, or this part of their journey is done. Writing is a chance to address things that bother me. It’s an important way for me to process experiences, whether those are my own, or ones that I witness others living through.