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Chicago, IL - Writing our World Press, Chicago is proud to announce that Janis F. Kearney, former personal diarist to President William Jefferson Clinton, has written her second book, Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton, from Hope to Harlem. The official publication date will coincide with the book launch in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September, 2006.

Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton, from Hope to Harlem, introduces new and vastly important voices to the dialogue around America's 42nd President. Black Americans were invited by the Clinton diarist to share their insights, memories, and opinions of William Jefferson Clinton - the man, the leader, the enigma. These conversations span three decades of the former president's life-from the early`70s, through his new life as an ex-president, in Harlem, New York. In her quest to document the reality of Clinton's race image, the author traveled from Hope to Harlem, talking with African Americans from all walks of life. Of those recounting their experiences, affinity, disagreements, or disappointments with Bill Clinton's leadership, none believed his role as America's first “race president,” was anything but deserving. Conversations is not meant as a black America's definitive analysis of this complex leader, but a collection of fresh, and unheard voices about this this white, southern politician who became America’s 42nd President, and dared to make America's racial conflicts a national crisis. Conversations, which paints a more realistic picture of Bill Clinton's unique connection with African Americans; and offers readers a look at the history of the southern delta, and the environment that helped shape this complex leader, serves as an important addition to the archives of American and presidential history

Kearney describes Conversations as part historical narrative, and part oral history. A book that “had to be written, and needs to be read,” by presidential scholars, students of political science, historians and those who specialize in southern politics and history. Interviewees include former President William Jefferson Clinton, U.S. Congressman John Lewis; former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial; former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell; Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb; and former Cleveland Mayor Michael White; as well as Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Levering Lewis; William Julius Wilson, Director, Harvard's Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program; baseball great Hank Aaron; Women's rights icon, Dorothy Height; former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater; former Director, Clinton White House Personnel, Bob Nash, and Autrilla Watkins Scott, an early babysitter of young Billy Clinton; and Petrilla Bonners Pollefeyt, the first and only black country and western star born in Hope, Arkansas.

Janis F. Kearney grew up in a sharecropping family in the southeast Arkansas delta. She is a writer, lecturer and oral historian, who published the award-winning Arkansas State Press Newspaper, formerly owned by civil rights legend Daisy Gatson Bates, of the 1957 Central High Crisis. She is a visiting fellow at DePaul University. Kearney's first book, Cotton Field of Dreams: A Memoir, chronicled her journey from the southeast Arkansas Delta and offered readers a vivid picture of the roles of women, children and families in the Arkansas delta, and the lessons the Kearney children learned from cotton sharecroppers, parents of 19 children.

Janis met William Jefferson Clinton (whom she would later serve as diarist) in the early seventies, shortly after his stint as University of Arkansas law professor. Three of her brothers were his law students and worked in his Cabinet, during his five terms as Governor of Arkansas.

In 1987, Janis purchased the Arkansas State Press Newspaper from her mentor, and civil rights legend, Daisy Bates - who led the renowned 1957 civil rights integration of the Little Rock Central High School.

In 1992, she took a sabbatical from her newspaper to work in the Clinton/Gore Campaign with full expectations of returning to her newspaper. As fate would have it, William Jefferson Clinton was elected President and Janis was asked to join the White House press office in January, 1993.

Janis served in the Clinton White House for almost six years as President Clinton's personal diarist.

After leaving the White House in 2001, Janis moved to Chicago, and began a two-year W.E.B. Du Bois fellowship at Harvard University. She began researching and writing Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton, from Hope to Harlem. Kearney has one son, Darryl. She resides in Chicago.