Janet Smith

Janet Smith has worked in Vancouver’s fashion and arts media for more than three decades. Holding an Honours Bachelor of Journalism degree from Ottawa’s Carleton University, with a specialization in arts reporting, she has worked as a freelancer at publications ranging from Where Magazine to Seattle Weekly. After working as a fashion and arts writer at the West Ender, she spent more than a decade as the fashion and arts editor at the Georgia Straight, at its height as the largest alternative weekly in North America. Her weekly column devoted to Vancouver designers earned her a Vancouver Fashion Week Industry Originator Award. During the pandemic, she and a small team left to found a new digital magazine called Stir, a fresh new platform devoted to arts and culture in Vancouver. More recently, she oversaw the launch of Stir’s annual print fall arts guide.

Janet can be found any night of the week out at the city’s arts events and fashion happenings, often hosting pre-show talks. In the course of her work, she’s interviewed everyone from Chinese couturier Guo Pei to Vancouver icon Dorothy Grant for major feature stories. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle, has taken training with the Poynter Institute and Association of Alternative Newsmedia, and has earned several B.C. and Canadian journalism awards. Her teaching experience includes the Writing Centre at UBC and the Critical Futures training program for theatre critics. At KPU and her own publication, she approaches fashion as an art form to be treated with the journalistic rigor it deserves.