Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn is an author, journalist and essayist. Janice has published in the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Essence, among numerous others. Her recent MsMagazine.com article, “Growing Gray,” a meditation on hair, beauty and empowerment, debuted as the top performing post on the digital magazine. She is also a contributor to the James Gayles anthology, Reflections, and co-author of Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race, Culture and Creed.

In addition to her work in print, Janice has adopted a new storytelling platform, filmmaking, and is at work on a documentary, “…but can she play?”: Blowing the Roof Off Women Horn Players and Jazz. The work-in-progress project has been twice recognized by Black Women in Jazz and the Arts Awards for raising awareness on the stories of jazzwomen instrumentalists. She has been a finalist in the DreamAgo Plume y Pellicule international writing atelier as co-writer on the screenplay, Those People: A Love Story, and attended the organization’s week-long screenwriting workshop in Sierre, Switzerland.

Janice currently serves as Associate Director for the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC, where she earned her master’s degree in fiction. She has a B.A. from Loyola Marymount University, where she also taught journalism as an adjunct professor. She is a former Director of Special Projects and Senior Editor for Los Angeles Review of Books, and serves on the Board of Directors for APLA Health and JazzWomen and Girls Advocates.

As an educator, author, journalist and community advocate whose work focuses on women’s issues, culture and media, Janice’s experience with, and sensitivity to, working with people from wide ranging economic, racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientation/reassignment, is particularly noteworthy  –  for which she has received commendations from the City of Los Angeles, APLA Health and others for her community service and leadership.