Born in Canberra in 1961, Jane 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 in 1983.
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 speech writer for Tulane University. She also worked as a freelance editor and illustrator before attending Columbia University to study creative writing.
Books in order of publication:
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)
Villa E: A Novel (Liveright Publishing/ WW Notion, 2024)
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)
Oak Lawn Library Friends 