A black and white photograph of Janis Ian learning against a store front on the street. She has her arms crossed and her eyebrow raised, wearing a collared shirt and sunglasses and carrying a bag over her shoulder. Behind her the storefront window is entirely covered by circus poster advertisements. On the right there is a doorway to the store, that is partially out of frame.

Janis Ian entered the public eye as a teenager as a folk singer in the 1960s, her first hit single “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking)”, was written and recorded when she was 14. She grew up on a farm in New Jersey and began learning how to play instruments at age 2. Being so young and singing about controversial topics at the time like as interracial relationships, Ian faced a lot of resistance. Radio stations refused to play her songs and she has reported in her autobiography later that she received a lot of hate mail and death threats in these years. Her popularity was mainly within the 60’s and 70’s, but Ian continues to create and perform throughout the US and UK. She also is a columnist, regularly published with an LGBT news magazine The Advocate, and is a published short story science fiction author.