Jeanne Larsen


Jeanne Larsen is an American poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. Much of her work shows the growing influence of Buddhist perspectives on U.S. literature. This includes not only the poetry and creative nonfiction, but also the novels in her Avalokiteśvara trilogy: Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, and Manchu Palaces.

Biography

Born 1950, in Washington, D.C., Larsen grew up on U.S. Army posts in Kansas, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Germany. A graduate of Oberlin College, she received her M.A. from Hollins College and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa. She has also lived, worked, and studied in Taiwan and Japan. In 1980, she moved to the Roanoke Valley of Virginia in the United States, where she taught literature and creative writing at Hollins University until 2019.

Published works

  • What Penelope Chooses: Poems. Cider Press Review, 2019.
  • Why We Make Gardens . Mayapple Press, 2010.
  • Sally Paradiso. Brown Fedora Books, 2009.
  • Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China. BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005.
  • These Gardens privately printed limited edition, 2003.
  • Manchu Palaces. Henry Holt & Co., October 1996; abridged audiotape version: Audio Literature, 1997; reprint Authors Guild/iUniverse 2009.
  • Bronze Mirror. Henry Holt & Co 1991;, Book of the Month Club 1991; Fawcett 1992; Mondadori 1992; Centrum 1992; reprint Authors Guild/iUniverse 2009.
  • Silk Road. Henry Holt & Co. 1989; Heinemann 1989; Book of the Month Club 1989; Fawcett 1990; Mandarin 1991; Centrum 1990; Rizzoli 1990; Heyne 1991; Divisione Euroclub Italia 1991; reprint Authors Guild/iUniverse 2009.
  • Engendering the Word: Feminist Essays in Psychosexual Poetics. Temma F. Berg, ed.; co-editors, Anna Shannon Elfenbein, Jeanne Larsen, Elisa Kay Sparks. University of Illinois Press, 1989
  • Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao Princeton University Press, 1987.
  • James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita: A Book of Poems. University Press of Virginia, 1979.

    Awards

Larsen is the recipient of a Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the William L. Crawford Award for the year's best new novelist from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and student prizes from the Academy of American Poets.
She has also received residency fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Byrdcliffe Artists Colony, The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences, Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Eastern Frontier Society, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. The School for Criticism and Theory and the American Council of Learned Societies/Mellon Foundation have awarded her academic fellowships, and she first went to Taiwan on an Oberlin Shansi teaching-study fellowship.