Jana Reina Villorente Liberato was born in the United Arab Emirates and raised in Bloomfield, New Jersey. She graduated from Rutgers University Newark with a BA in neuroscience & behavior and a minor in computer science with a continued commitment to diversity, culture, and remembrance. 

While pursuing her bachelor’s, Liberato studied broadly including the courses: Philosophy & Religion, Women’s Medieval Literature, and Gothic Literature. She continued to work as an assistant in The Language, Behavior, and Brain Imaging Lab researching phonemic errors in order to isolate and identify the associated regions in the brain. This academic foundation was laid in order to study the God-shaped hole and how it appears in literature, particularly in gothic literature, the medieval mystics, and in religious fantasy.