Janice Elsheimer is a enthusiastic and entertaining speaker and author whose message is that creativity is a pathway to personal and spiritual growth. Writers, visual artists, musicians, actors, and folks who simply want permission to start exercising their creative muscles fill up her workshops, seminars and classes. They leave with a new sense of what is possible: a conviction that they can enrich their lives by developing God-given talents. Her books, The Creative Call, and the soon-to-be-published Grounded in the Garden: the Wisdom of Growing Things are both literary and motivational masterpieces. Janice’s presentations leave her participants refreshed, encouraged, and ready to reawaken the sleeping artist within.

An accomplished pianist, Janice attended Florida State University on music scholarships, eventually earning a BA in English Education. She holds a Masters in Gifted Education from the University of Arkansas and has taught students at every level from kindergarten through college. Her interest in creativity, whether in the classroom, the studio, the garden, or the kitchen derives from her own love of putting her hand to something. Convinced that people are creative by nature, she believes that despite our culture’s attempt to dissuade us from “wasting our time” on creative activities, this can be the best use of our time. This is one of the most important messages she brings to conferences, meetings, seminars and retreats.

During her thirteen years spent in Arkansas she literally built her own house—while cultivating a half-acre organic garden and orchard on twenty-five acres of mountaintop land, teaching English full time, getting her masters degree, and raising her son James. Janice believes that when the work we do results in creating something new, it brings us closer to God and to becoming the people He created us to be. This belief has informed her goals and philosophy in the years since her return to Winter Park, Florida, where she lives, writes, plays music, gardens and shares life with her highly creative husband Seth.

Janice is a member of AWSA (Advanced Writers & Speakers Association) and sits on the board of Word Weavers Christian Writers Group in Orlando. She is graduate of CLASS (Christian Leaders, Authors, Speakers Services) and is a frequent speaker at conferences, both Christian and secular, throughout the country. Her writing has appeared in Garden Design magazine, In Touch magazine, The 101, Orlando Arts, and The Orlando Sentinel newspaper.