JEM’s life story is the stuff that memoirs are made of. JEM went from punk rock high school dropout to corporate lawyer to rock star deputy public defender and nonfiction writer. JEM’s stories, blog and video podcast document her journey so take a look!
Her hybrid chapbook, “Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender, or how I became a punk rock lawyer” was published in August 2021 by Bamboo Darts Press.
Her YA book, “Tales of an Inland Empire Girl”, was just published by Los Nietos Press. And is available now!
Juanita E. Mantz (“JEM”) is a writer, performer and USC Law educated lawyer/deputy public defender. Her stories have been published in literary journals, newspapers and magazines including in The Acentos Review, Aljazeera, As/Us, Entropy, Mutha, Muse, The San Bernardino-Singing (anthology), The Dirty Spoon Radio Hour, and The Riverside Press Enterprise, amongst others.
JEM is an alumni of the VONA Writing Workshops and is an alum of the Macondo Writers Workshop for writers striving to change the world. She has a memoir about her young adult years: “Tales of an Inland Empire Girl” and an International Latino Book Awards gold medal winning chapbook titled “Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender or how I became a punk rock lawyer”. She also serves as a board member of the Inlandia Institute.
She loves punk rock music and has presented her stories at the UCR Writers Week, the UCR Punk Conference, Beyond Baroque and AWP. She was the 2022 Writer in Residence at Pasadena City College.
JEM also produced the ASA 2020 Freedom Course on Combatting Mass Incarceration. See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YcyHrEyo_Z0. She performed her story “Stalling” in the 2016 cast of Listen to Your Mother in Burbank.
JEM is in the low residency MFA creative writing program at UNO with a nonfiction focus and is working on adapting her memoir into a stage play.
To find her: