Jane Alison Explained

Jane Alison (born 1961) is an Australian author.

Early life and education

Born in Canberra in 1961,^[1] Alison spent two years in Australia as a small child, growing up mainly in the United States as a child of diplomatic parents. She attended public schools in Washington, D.C., and then earned a B.A. in classics from Princeton University^[2] in 1983. Before writing fiction, she worked as an administrator for the National Endowment for the Humanities,^[3] as a production artist for the Washington City Paper, as an editor for the Miami New Times, and as a proposal and speech writer for Tulane University. She also worked as a freelance editor and illustrator before attending Columbia University to study creative writing.

Literary career

Alison's first novel, The Love-Artist, was published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux^[4] and has been translated into seven languages. It was followed by The Marriage of the Sea, a New York Times Notable Book^[5] of 2003. Her latest novel, Natives and Exotics, appeared in 2005 and was one of that summer's recommended readings by Alan Cheuse^[6] of National Public Radio.^[7] Her short fiction and critical writing have recently appeared in Seed; Five Points; Postscript: Essays on Film and the Humanities; and The Germanic Review. She has also written several biographies for children and co-edited with Harold Bloom a critical series on women writers. She has taught writing and literature at Columbia University, Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, and for writers groups in Geneva, Switzerland. She also participated in an on-line MOOC course for University of Virginia.^[8] Having lived in Karlsruhe, Germany for the past 10 years, she recently moved to Miami, Florida, in 2007, and began teaching in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Miami.

Bibliography

Memoir

• The Sisters Antipodes, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)

Fiction

• The Love-Artist: A Novel, (Picador, 2002)
• The Marriage of the Sea, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition, 2003)
• Natives and Exotics, (Harvest Books; 1st edition, 2006)
• Nine Island, (Catapult, 2016)

Translation

• Change Me: Stories of Sexual Transformation from Ovid, Oxford U. P.

Criticism and other non-fiction

• Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, (Catapult, 2019)

References

1. Web site: Alison, Jane (1961-) - People and organisations. Trove. en. 2019-06-28.
2. http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/features/features_35.html Jane Alison '83 discusses her first novel, The Love-Artist
3. http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/04/1018/3a.shtml Jane Alison, a concentrator in classics and a member of the class of 1983, used her training in Latin and Greek to get a first job at the National Endowment for the Humanities
4. http://us.macmillan.com/author/janealison Farrar, Straus & Giroux
5. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE4DF113AF934A35751C1A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all An intricate, elegant novel that ponders the connections among love, illusion and fidelity in the permutations of eight central characters behaving in two romantic and romanticized cities, New Orleans and Venice.
6. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4701145 Alan Cheuse: An Armful of Books for Summer
7. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4664336 National Public Radio Excerpt: 'Natives and Exotics'
8. https://www.coursera.org/learn/historical-fiction/lecture/QmNrF/some-challenges-in-historical-fiction-writing Some challenges in historical fiction writing - Poetry and Exile in Ancient Rome: Jane Alison

External links

• Jane Alison's Home Page
• Artfully as He Writes: New York Times review of The Love Artist
• Fluid Dynamics: New York Times review of The Marriage of the Sea
• Transplants: New York Times review of Natives and Exotics