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Jane Alison (born 1961) is an Australia-born author based in the U.S.
| The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies .(December 2025) |
Jane Alison (born 1961) is an Australia-born author based in the U.S.
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.
Alison's first novel, The Love-Artist, was published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux [4] . It was followed by The Marriage of the Sea, a New York Times Notable Book [5] of 2003. Natives and Exotics, from 2005 was one of that summer's recommended readings by Alan Cheuse [6] of National Public Radio. [7] Her highly acclaimed memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, traces her upbringing in a family in which parents exchanged partners and was excerpted as a Modern Love column. [8] She followed it with a nonfiction novel, Nine Island, and translations of Ovid's stories of sexual transformation, Change Me. A book on the craft and theory of writing, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, is widely taught and cited in creative writing programs across the country. [9] Her most recent book is a novel inspired by Modernist architects Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier, Villa E [10] Her short fiction and critical writing have appeared in The Paris Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Oprah Daily, and elsewhere, and her books have been translated into a dozen languages. She has taught writing and literature at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Miami and has been professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia since 2013.