Jane Alison

Jane Alison was born in Canberra, Australia, and grew up in the Australian and U.S. foreign services. She attended public schools in Washington, D.C., and earned a B.A. in classics from Princeton University. Before writing fiction, she worked as an administrator for the National Endowment for the Humanities, as a production artist for the Washington City Paper, as an editor for the Miami New Times, and as a proposal and speechwriter for Tulane University. She also worked as a freelance editor and illustrator before attending Columbia University to study creative writing. Her first novel, "The Love-Artist," was published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and has been translated into seven languages. It was followed by "The Marriage of the Sea," a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. Her novel, "Natives and Exotics," appeared in 2005 and was one of that summer’s recommended readings by Alan Cheuse of National Public Radio. 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, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, and for writers groups in Geneva, Switzerland. Jane Alison's most recent book, "Nine Island," is an autobiographical novel forthcoming from Catapult in Sept. 2016.She is currently Professor and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville, VA.