J. Faye D’Avanza

Writer | Librarian | Creative Entrepreneur

J. Faye D’Avanza is a writer-editor, holistic librarian, creative guide, and the founder of Library of Care—a 21st-century education + resource hub dedicated to curating and sharing the knowledge, stories, and tools needed for creative recovery, healing, and thriving in the burnout age.

Known as an information professional for creative well-being, she writes and edits her Substack newsletter Keeping Creative Time which features regenerative writing from the ashes of burnout, along with original photography, to help you be well, create and thrive. The daughter of a renowned clockmaker, Faye brings to her writing a deep knowledge of the mechanism that controls our busy interconnected lives, and a passionate curiosity for restoring the body and its creative mind beyond the burnout culture narrative of the patriarchal clock.

For over twenty years, she worked in public libraries beginning as a book shelver during Y2K, a Reference Librarian during The Great Recession, and a Community Engagement Librarian who managed a vibrant public programming department, facilitated a Cookbook Club written up in Edible Rhody, co-produced the Rhody Radio podcast as featured in Library Journal, then found herself bookended and burned out amid the COVID-19 pandemic to become one of 4.5 million quitters in The Great Resignation. By leaving her job as a public librarian, she committed herself to answering two questions: “Why did I burn out in a job that I loved?” And, “How do you write a book when you only have the energy to write a fragment of a thought?” 

A creative workshop facilitator and coach, she is passionate about helping others on their parallel burnout recovery and creative healing journeys by nurturing one's passion for learning, connection, and growth. She holds an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts, a BA in English with minors in American Studies and Art from the University of New Hampshire, a Certificate in Editing from the University of Chicago, and is a certified Inward & Artward Creative Facilitator from Story Parlor in West Asheville, North Carolina.

Faye lives among the artists, tourists, trees, and mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, and can often be found drinking a matcha latte and writing in the margins of her books.