Janette DeFelice is a health sciences professor, author, essayist, former professional dancer, and physician who chose motherhood over medicine whose writing draws on themes of performance, motherhood, and the female experience. She has taught narrative-based medicine, evidence-based practice, and community health to the next generation of healthcare providers — work grounded in an MD from Rosalind Franklin University, an MPH from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MA in Humanities from The University of Chicago, where her master’s thesis examined the evolution of consciousness in Henrik Ibsen’s prose play cycle through Hegelian philosophy.

Before attending medical school, she danced professionally with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, River North Dance Company, and Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, working under directors including Sir Peter Hall of the Royal Shakespeare Company and choreographer Wayne McGregor. She has also taught dance at professional training schools in Chicago and performed and toured nationally and internationally.

In addition to fiction, DeFelice writes essays and commentary on culture, politics, medicine, public health, and environmental issues. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.

A lifelong Chicagoland girl, she grew up in Hammond, Indiana, lived for many years in Chicago, and now resides in the suburbs with her husband, twin teenagers, and an orange cat. The Last Pirouette: A Novel in Three Acts is her debut novel.