Juanita Estella Mantz

Juanita E. Mantz (“JEM”) is a USC Law educated lawyer, writer, performer, and podcaster who believes writing has the power to change the world. She graduated from UCR in 1999 with a degree in English Literature and from USC Law in 2002 and works as a deputy public defender.

Juanita is a creative nonfiction writer & screenwriter who has 2 books, a YA novel/memoir titled "Tales of an Inland Empire Girl" (Los Nietos Press, Jan 2022) about her journey from punk rock high school dropout to USC educated lawyer and an award winning hybrid chapbook titled "Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender, or how I became a punk rock lawyer" (Bamboo Dart Press, Aug 2021). She is currently working on their adaptations to stage and screen.

Her stories have been published in literary journals, newspapers & anthologies including in The Acentos Review, Aljazeera, As/Us, Entropy, Mutha, Muse, San Bernardino-Singing (anthology), The Dirty Spoon Radio Hour, The James Franco Review, The Press Enterprise, The Riverside Lawyer and Inlandia, among others.

She performed her story "Stalling" in the 2016 cast of Listen to Your Mother, Burbank. She is an alumni of the VONA and Macondo workshops. She serves as VP on the board of directors of the Inlandia Institute.

Juanita has presented at UCR Writers' Week, the UCR Punk Conference, Pasadena LitFest, AWP & Beyond Baroque. She produced and taught the ASA 2020 Freedom Course on Combatting Mass Incarceration.

She is in the low residency MFA creative writing program at UNO. She was named the 2022 writer in residence at Pasadena City College and her chapbook "Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender" was awarded a gold medal at the International Latino Book Awards in the Mariposa category for best first book, nonfiction English.

Check out her video podcast, "Life of JEM" where she does live interviews with writers. It's available on her Life of JEM FB page, on her author site and on Twitter!