Janet Wells

Janet Wells is a writer and journalist in Berkeley, California. A former staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, the San Francisco Business Times, UCSF Magazine, Instant City, Margin, Nurseweek, Audubon, Climbing, and Rock and Ice. Janet is a graduate of the San Francisco State University MFA program in creative writing, and the founder of Editrix Communications. “Bamboo Grows Straight to the Sky” is her first novel; she is at work on her second, “Ghost Dogs.”

Bamboo Grows Straight to the Sky

Beyond the thatched eaves of the school building, the Moie River shimmered in the hazy midday sun, its green oxbows carving through steep lush mountains. From afar the refugee camp’s rows of bamboo huts, nestled among palm and banana trees, looked like a tropical paradise. Up close, the terraces were barren hard-pack dirt, the weathered shelters so close together neighbors could climb onto one another’s porches.