Janine Latus

Janine Latus is a freelance writer, author, and public speaker who lives near Carrboro, N.C. She describes her job as “asking impertinent questions of interesting people.” Her work has allowed her to fly over marshes in an ultralight, make cheese with nuns who have vowed silence, and harvest oysters in the muck bottoms of Virginia’s eastern shore. In 2007, her memoir, “If I Am Missing or Dead,” became an international bestseller, which led her to give hundreds of talks on the spectrum of relationship abuse. (“I can kill a dinner party in ten minutes flat,” she says, with a note of pride.)