Jana Striegel

Background

Jana Striegel was born on November 15, 1955, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was the daughter of J. R. and Ollie Virginia Striegel.

Education

Jana Striegel attended the University of New Mexico, where he received a bachelor's degree in dance, theater arts, and education with distinction in 1982. Also, she earned a teaching certificate.

Career

Jana Striegel was a dance instructor. She was a dancer for New Mexico Ballet Company, Ballet del Monte Sol, American Southwest Ballet Company, and Six Flags Over Mid America. From 1973 to 1982, Striegel served as a choreographer, producer, and director at the Albuquerque and New Mexico Junior Miss scholarship program. In 1982, she became the owner of Jana's Academy of Music and Dance, where she also was an artistic director until 1990. At her dance studio, she developed a reading readiness class for preschool children in which she used movement and music to prepare young students for academic learning.

Dancing had always been a significant part of Jana Striegel's life, and it became the subject matter of her second career, writing books for children. In 2002, she made her debut as a novelist with Homeroom Exercise, a story about a young dancer for middle-grade readers. Jana Striegel likened writing novels to choreograph dances. Working with so many dance students of different ages gave her raw material for characters as well. Striegel's characters emerged as a composite of the young people she has taught: from children of supportive families secure in who they are to children of dysfunctional families looking to the studio as a place to be safe, happy, and respected. Striegel was also a contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times and Albuquerque Journal, sometimes under the name Jana Striegel-Wilson.

Jana Striegel met a dancer during her senior year of high school who had been diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when she was eleven years old. Although she knew about the adult form of this disease, she was not aware that children could fall prey to it. As Striegel studied the juvenile form of arthritis, she learned it was not that uncommon and read of the courage of young people who deal with this illness. The idea of the determined young dancer dealing with a debilitating disease came together, and the main character of Jana Striegel's book, Homeroom Exercise, Regan was born.

Regan is a talented dancer with a supportive family. She plans to pursue dancing as a career and hopes that being selected to host her school's closed-circuit television dance show, called Homeroom Exercise, will give her a leg up, figuratively speaking. Suddenly, however, Regan's joints swell, and she is feverish, symptoms that lead to a diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that can cripple. In the course of the novel, Regan deals emotionally and physically with her illness and relationships with her friends. The outlook for Regan, while not overly optimistic, is at least hopeful and reflects the position that Striegel took in her own life.

Achievements

• Jana Striegel was well known as a writer, dancer, and choreographer. She was a dancer for New Mexico Ballet Company, Ballet del Monte Sol, American Southwest Ballet Company, Six Flags Over Mid America, and also she was a founder of the Jana's Academy of Music and Dance. As a writer, for her book, Homeroom Exercise, Jana Striegel received a Best Book Honor from the Society of School Librarians International in 2002.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Homeroom Exercise

    (When eleven-year-old Regan begins to suffer from juvenile...)

    2002

Views

Jana Striegel was a cancer survivor, diagnosed in 1994, and continued to be a chronic cancer patient but refuse to give up her dreams. At that time, she has started a family and begun my publishing career. She believed the study of dance equipped her to deal with these challenges. Striegel hoped that readers find her books entertaining as well as a place of comfort and encouragement. She strived to share the joy, beauty, and magic of dance, which has graced her life.

Quotations: "Writing came to me at a later stage of my life. Although I was an avid reader, I can't say that when I was a child, I knew writing was what I had to do. What I've always been is a dancer. From my first recital as a yellow-feathered canary to today, I am a dancer. Now retired from professional dance, my writing has become an extension of that life."

"Choreography had always been one of my favorite parts of the dance world."

"Creating dances was a way for me to tell stories with bodies, lights, and music; when I started writing, I slipped comfortably into putting stories into words on paper."

Membership

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  Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators , United States

• 

  Author's Guild , United States

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  Southwest Writers , United States

Interests

• Walking, biking, using the gym, studying piano, reading, gardening, and enjoying theater

Connections

Jana Striegel married Mark Wilson on September 28, 1985. They had a son, Tanner.

Father:

J. R. Striegel

Mother:

Ollie VirginiaStriegel

Brother:

Rick Striegel

Brother:

Ron Striegel

husband:

Mark Wilson

Son:

Tanner Wilson