JANEY BENNETT’s first novel, The Pale Surface of Things, published by Hopeace Press in 2007 (ISBN 978-0-9734007-2-4) was awarded seven US book-industry awards. Set on the Greek island of Crete, The Pale Surface of Things can be read as a fast-moving adventure or a thoughtful novel of redemption, setting an unaware young American man in the volatile world of a traditional Cretan village.

She completed a Master’s degree in Architecture History from Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. Her thesis advisor was Reyner Banham, author of Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and Los Angeles, the Architecture of Four Ecologies. His interest in peripheral subjects enriched his writings, and that lesson was passed on to Janey as she broadened the scope of her master’s thesis on the Finnish architect, Erik Bryggman. Janey has written numerous articles on architecture in Finland and in the US for such publications as Architecture Magazine, Design Book Review, and Form Function Finland.

The Museum of Finnish Architecture subsequently invited her to write a major essay on Erik Bryggman’s masterwork, the Resurrection Chapel in Turku, for the exhibition they mounted for his centenary. Her work for that essay was funded by grants from Fulbright, The Graham Foundation, Finlandia Foundation, and Finnair. The essay, titled “Sub Specie Aeternitatis,” appears in Erik Bryggman, Arkkitehti, Arkitekt, Architect, published in 1991 by the Museum of Finnish Architecture. She also assembled Resonances in Silence, a book project examining the ideas, both built and written, of the philosopher-architect, Juhani Pallasmaa. The book incorporates sketches, working drawings, graphics, and writings by Pallasmaa, with photographs of his built work, and the absolute minimum of text by Bennett. It is an exercise in communicating the way one architect’s mind works, a montage of ideas and images designed to link Pallasmaa’s ideas. This book is on hold for now.

The Journal of Taliesin Fellows published her survey of the built work of Mark Mills, a California architect/engineer who was an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright. That article is the basis, twenty years later, of the book she has just completed—THE FANTASTIC SEASHELL OF THE MIND: THE ARCHITECTURE OF MARK MILLS.