Jan Guenther Braun is a writer who is also a member of a collectively owned organic grocery store. On the weekends she performs civil marriages. In the past few years she was selected for the Manitoba Writers’ Guild Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program, won the Manitoba round of the CBC Poetry Face-Off and received a Manitoba Arts Council Emerging Writers’ Grant. Jan is has put the finishing touches on her first novel entitled Somewhere Else which will be published by Arbeiter Ring Press (www.arbeiterring.com) in the winter of 2008.

Originally from Saskatchewan, Jan grew up on a farm and moved to Winnipeg in 1997 earning a Bachelor of Theology from Canadian Mennonite Bible College in 2000 followed by a B.A., English Literature (Hons) from the University of Waterloo. In her work as an undergraduate in English Literature she focused on the transformative power of performance poetry within the context of communities in conflict. With a background in theology, farming, and performance poetry she integrates these themes in her writing through the lens of a queer Mennonite.