J. Faye D’Avanza

Writer | Editor | Librarian
Creative Facilitator + Coach
Founder, Library of Care

J. Faye D’Avanza, MSLIS is a writer and founder of Library of Care, offering creative empowerment coaching and facilitation with a relational and somatic approach to living a whole creative life. After experiencing chronic burnout as a public librarian, which led to a mid-life dark night of the soul, this experience became her biggest catalyst for growth and creative healing.

The author of the indie newsletter, Keeping Creative Time on Substack, Faye is an Inward & Artward certified creative facilitator, a certified book editor, and a (RYT-200) yoga teacher-in-training. She lives among the artists, tourists, trees, and mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, where she can often be found drinking a matcha latte, writing in the margins of her books, and engaging in meandering conversations with people who care deeply.

THE DEEPER DIVE

The daughter of a renowned clockmaker, Faye brings to her work 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: “What does it mean to live a whole creative life?” And, “How do you write a book when you only have the energy to write a fragment of a thought?” 

In 2024, Faye began serving as a business coach for creative-based business owners and healers with Craft Your Commerce, a program sector of the nonprofit Mountain BizWorks. She was initially brought on the team to lead weekly virtual "creative healing" sessions in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene to artists, arts nonprofit leaders, and creative-based business owners directly impacted by the storm.

EDUCATION & TRAINING

Faye 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, is a certified Inward & Artward Creative Facilitator from Story Parlor in West Asheville, North Carolina, and is currently a (RYT-200) yoga teacher-in-training with West Asheville Yoga.

In 2026, Faye became trained to teach Craft Your Commerce’s Get Started: Crafting Your Path, an entrepreneurial basics course for artists and creatives.