You Belong Here
So much is in store for you at Lesley University! Now that you’ve been accepted, RSVP for our exclusive celebration for new undergraduate and Threshold students for either Saturday, March 23 or Saturday, April 27.

Jane Brox

MFA in Creative Writing Faculty

faculty jane brox sitting in rocking chair

Creative nonfiction is a wonderfully open genre, which also possesses ongoing questions of its own: What are the responsibilities of writing from one's life? Of writing of another's life, “What is "the truth"? How might a writer best negotiate the complex relationship between truth and memory? There may be no definitive answers to these questions, but I think that any writer who is serious about the genre must live with their complexities.

As much as an apprenticeship in nonfiction involves grappling with these questions, no less essential is a thorough attention to craft - shape and syntax, image and metaphor, voice and structure. I believe students gain their greatest understanding of craft by learning to read as a writer, and that exploring the literary tradition - nonfiction, fiction, and poetry – as well as contemporary works is essential to a writer's education.

The one-on-one structure of a low-residency program is ideal in that it allows for both the support and the solitude essential to developing one's voice. I value most of all the way it allows me, as an advisor, to tailor the work and reading to the needs of each individual student.

Learn more about Jane at her website, www.janebrox.com

Work

Books

Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives. Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt (Boston, MA, 2019)

Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt (Boston, MA, 2010).

Clearing Land: Legacies of the American Farm. North Point Press/FSG, (New York, NY, 2004).

Five Thousand Days Like This One. Beacon Press (Boston, MA, 1999).

Here And Nowhere Else. Beacon Press (Boston, MA, 1995).

Selected Journal, Newspaper, and Magazine Publications

The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Ohio Review, Salamander, New England ReviewLumina, The Hudson Review, Zócalo Public Square, OnEarth, The Boston Sunday Globe, The Independent (UK), The Huffington Post, Orion

Selected Anthologies

Best American Essays, 1996, Pushcart Prize XXV and XXVIII, The Norton Book of Nature Writing

In Short 

Brief Encounters, The Georgia Review Essay Retrospective: The First Fifty Years, The Ohio Review New and Selected 30th Anniversary Issue, The Beacon Best of 1999, The Practical Guide To Writing, Encounters: Readings for Exploration and Argument, Creative Nonfiction: A Guide, One Hundred Great Essays

Past and Current Affiliations

Harvard University,  Harvard Extension School, Bowdoin College, The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences

Education

M.F.A in Poetry: Warren Wilson College
B.A., English Literature, Colby College 

In the News