Janet Carey Eldred has been on the faculty of the English Department of the University of Kentucky since 1987, where she also directs its campus-wide writing initiative. She coauthored Imagining Rhetoric (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), a study of early U.S. womens composing practices. The essay included in Sentimental Attachments concerning the adoption of her sons received the Roy T. Ames Memorial Essay Award.