About

Janet Burroway was born in Tucson, Arizona, raised in Phoenix, and began college at the University of Arizona, where she weighed the careers of writing, acting and fashion design, and from which she was chosen one of the earliest “Guest Editors” at Mademoiselle Magazine. She transferred to Barnard College, then went on to Cambridge University (England) on a Marshall scholarship, and to the Yale School of Drama (RCA-NBC Fellow 1960-61). 

She taught 1965-71 at The University of Sussex, England, from where she also designed costumes for the University’s Gardner Center and for The National Theatre of Belgium. She returned to the US in 1971 and taught at the University of Illinois; the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa; the Florida State University at Tallahassee (1972-2002), and most recently in the MA/MFA Writing Program at Northwestern University. She is a Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita from FSU, and in 2014 received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Humanities Council of Florida

She is the author of some twenty books, including nine novels, three children’s books, essays, poetry and a memoir. Her three earliest novels have been reissued from Michael Walmer Publisher in the UK and others are forthcoming. Her most recent novel, Simone in Pieces, will appear from the University of Wisconsin Press in 2025. Her poems, essays and stories have appeared widely in literary magazines and newspapers in both the U.S. and the U.K., including MS, Narrative, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Pushcart Prizes, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times.

Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Tenth Edition, University of Chicago Press) is the most widely used fiction writing text in America, and has been translated into Simple and Complex Chinese and into Vietnamese. Imaginative Writing: the Elements of Craft, (Pearson 2023) is in its fifth edition.

Her plays have been seen in Los Angeles, Chicago and London as well as regional theatres, and her novel Opening Nights was made into a serial drama for PBS in 1998. In the early 2000s her three children’s books were set to symphonic music by composer Philip Wharton, which have been performed throughout the Midwest and The Perfect Pig also by On Site Opera at Little Island in NYC. She has since collaborated with Philip on a variety of Art Songs and a song cycle. Burroway has given readings and lectures in some ninety venues in America, England, Sweden, China, and UAE, mostly at universities but also at bookstores, festivals and on Zoom.

The author’s son Alex Eysselinck lives in London, and with his wife Tricia Howard has raised two grown daughters, Eleanor and Holly. Her elder son, Cpt. Timothy Eysselinck, died in Africa 2004. Tim’s daughter Thyra is now doing graduate studies at CUNY.

Burroway has lived in Phoenix and Tucson; New York City and Binghamton, New York; Cambridge, Sussex, and London, England; New Haven, Connecticut; Ghent, Belgium; and with her husband of thirty-plus years, Utopian scholar and film critic Peter Ruppert, in Tallahassee, Florida and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They now live in Chicago.

Janet Burroway’s archive is housed at the Florida State University. Explore them here.

Photos of Janet