Janet Lewis Saidi is the creator of The Austen Connection, a public-humanities and journalism project that connects Austen’s literature to the pop-culture and current events of our world today. The project has been featured in numerous publications such as Electric Lit, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and at national and international conferences such as Melbourne’s AustenCon and the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) AGM. A professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, Janet has taught writing, editing, and producing for fourteen years. In addition to her work as a producer at KBIA, Missouri’s NPR-affiliate, her journalistic work has appeared on NPR, the BBC, PBS, and in Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor.