Janean L. Watkins

Janean L. Watkins is a multidisciplinary storyteller, content creator, and creative professional with over two decades of experience spanning publishing, digital media, and social justice advocacy. She is the founder of the award-winning .:SEEDS:. Literary Arts Journal and made history as the first Black Editor-in-Chief of Northeastern Illinois University’s student newspaper.

In 2016, she launched Urban Matrix Creative Solutions LLC, a boutique firm offering web design, content strategy, and web-based storytelling for artists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. Under the Urban Matrix banner, she co-produced Musicon3—a YouTube artist series in partnership with Roc Star Studios—produced Boss Chronicles, a one-season web series spotlighting Chicago’s entrepreneurial scene, and published a four-issue print run of Urban Matrix Magazine.

Janean’s creative work is deeply rooted in justice, cultural legacy, and expansive imagination. She has collaborated with organizations such as Soul Survivors of Chicago, Women With A Vision, LIFT Louisiana, and Chicago Volunteer Doulas, where she currently serves as Communications & Technology Manager. Her visual storytelling includes music videos and documentary shorts that center on community resilience and liberation.

She is currently writing Awaken the Anomalies, a speculative fiction trilogy that explores survival, memory, power, and resistance through the intersecting lives of extraordinary people of color navigating a fractured world. Alongside the trilogy, she shares personal essays and creative reflections via her Substack and curates work-in-progress through her Linktree.

Janean is in the seed stage of cultivating a more intentional digital and social presence—sharing her creative process, experimenting with multi-platform storytelling, and connecting with fellow dreamers and storytellers. At the heart of her work is a commitment to truth-telling, cultural preservation, and radical imagination.