Janowitz, Brenda

PERSONAL:

Born in NY. Education: Cornell University, B.S.; Hofstra Law School, J.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Mollie Glick, The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc., 216 E. 75th St., Ste. 1E, New York, NY 10021. E-mail—brenda@brendajanowitz.com.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, lecturer, educator, career counselor, and attorney. Kaye Scholer LLP (law firm), associate attorney; the Honorable Marilyn Dolan Go, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York, law clerk. Mediabistro, instructor in creative writing. Lecturer on writing and publishing. Has worked as a career counselor at two law schools in New York, NY.

WRITINGS:

Scot on the Rocks: How I Survived My Ex-boyfriend's Wedding with My Dignity Ever-so Slightly Intact, Red Dress Ink (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including the National Law Journal and the New York Law Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brenda Janowitz is a writer, educator, and attorney. She is a graduate of Hofstra Law School, where she served as a member of the Law Review and was winner of the Law Review Writing Competition, noted a biographer on her home page. Janowitz has been a clerk for a New York magistrate judge and an associate attorney at the law firm of Kaye Scholer LLP, where she concentrated on intellectual property cases involving areas such as trademarks, the Internet, antitrust, and false advertising. Janowitz has often put her legal and writing talents to use serving others, working as a career counselor in two New York City law schools, lecturing and giving seminars on writing and the publishing process, and teaching fiction writing through the Mediabistro Web site, including an eight-week class on how to write chick lit.

Janowitz has never had difficulty reconciling her desire to write fiction with her career as an attorney. ‘I've always been a writer. In fact, that's the reason why I became a lawyer in the first place—trying to find a career where I could write full time,’ Janowitz told an interviewer on the ChickLitGurrl Web site. ‘But I've always had a real love for fiction, and I'd find myself practicing law and thinking about these fictional stories that I wanted to write.’ The experience of attending some ex-boyfriends' weddings made her life ‘resemble some of my favorite chick lit novels,’ she told the interviewer, and she finally found it easier to write down her experiences than dwell on them.

Now a novelist, Janowitz made her debut with Scot on the Rocks: How I Survived My Ex-boyfriend's Wedding with My Dignity Ever-so Slightly Intact. Lawyer Brooke Miller is anticipating attending the wedding of ex-boyfriend Trip to a gorgeous Hollywood starlet, an event made tolerable by the presence of her own beau, the handsome and sexy Scotsman Douglas. Brooke's life takes a devastatingly downward turn when Douglas breaks up with her only days before Trip's wedding. Worse, Douglas turns out to have been cheating on her all along and has proposed to another woman. Unable to face the prospect of attending Trip's wedding alone and seeking to shed the embarrassment of her breakup, Brooke convinces her alluring friend and coworker, Jack, to go along with her and pretend to be Douglas. Despite all best intentions, Brooke's scheme does not unfold as planned. Amidst the chaos, however, there exists a glimmer of hope, as Brooke realizes that she may have been interested in the wrong man all along. Booklist reviewer Kristine Huntley called Scot on the Rocks a ‘breezy romantic comedy with plenty of laughs."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2007, Kristine Huntley, review of Scot on the Rocks: How I Survived My Ex-boyfriend's Wedding with My Dignity Ever-so Slightly Intact, p. 24.

ONLINE

Brenda Janowitz Home Page,http://www.brendajanowitz.com (November 22, 2007).

Brenda Janowitz MySpace Page,http://www.myspace.com/brendajanowitz (November 22, 2007).

ChickLitGurrl Web log,http://chicklitgurrl.blogspot.com/ (March 12, 2007), interview with Brenda Janowitz.

Modern Girl Style, http://www.moderngirlstyle.com/ (August 7, 2007), Kamela Cody, review of Scot on the Rocks and interview with Brenda Janowitz.

Romantic Times,http://www.romantictimes.com/ (November 22, 2007), Jennifer Madsen, review of Scot on the Rocks.

Trashionista.com,http://www.trashionista.com/ (July 26, 2007), Keris Stainton, review of Scot on the Rocks.