Motion of the Ocean (Esarey)

Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—San Diego, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Whitman College
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington

Janna Cawrse Esarey was born in 1971 in San Diego, California. When she was just an ankle biter, her family relocated to Yokosuka, Japan, where her dad was a dentist in the Navy. When Janna was four, her parents went ocean sailing with friends. They capsized (twice) in a typhoon off the coast of Japan.

The family moved back to Ohio for a brief time, and then to Seattle where Janna grew up. In high school, Janna fell in love with Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s song “Southern Cross” and swore she would one day sail the world. Janna’s mom, recalling her own typhoon experience, didn’t know if this was an idle threat or a cruel joke.

Janna attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where she fell in love with a fisherman and fellow philosophy major. He dumped her. Janna studied in France for a year and became fluent in French the best way she knew how: from a French beau. Upon her return to the States, Janna graduated from Whitman cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, receiving the William Soper Prize in Philosophy.

Eager to put her philosophy major to good use, Janna worked on a dude ranch in Wyoming, baked pretzels in Bavaria, and ski bummed in Utah. When she grew tired of the phrase “knee-deep pow-pow, dude,” Janna became a Writing Center Fellow at Georgetown University. She earned an MA in English with an emphasis in teaching writing. During this time, that fisherman Janna had dated in college came crawling back. They enjoyed a six-month e-romance. She dumped him.

From 1997 to 1999, Janna taught middle school in New Orleans with Teach For America, a program committed to ending educational inequity. She received the New Orleans New Teacher of the Year Award in 1998. Janna moved home to Seattle where she taught high school English and met, yet again, that fisherman she’d dated in college. This time, instead of dumping each other, they tied the knot and set out across the Pacific on a 35-foot sailboat.

During the two years that Janna spent sailing from Seattle to Hong Kong, she wrote for sailing magazines, including Sail and Cruising World, and anthologies, including More Sand in My Bra and Sweat & The City. It wasn’t until she moved back to the States in 2006 that she began serious work on her relationship memoir, The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman’s Search for the Meaning of Wife. Janna blogs about relationships for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at “Happily Even After.” (From the author's website.)