Burroway, Janet

Janet Burroway, a Florida State University English professor, is a novelist, teacher, playwright, columnist and critic.

Janet Burroway, M.A. Cambridge (1965), was born on September 21, 1936 in Phoenix, AZ, graduated cum laude from Barnard College in New York (1958) and received first-class honors from Cambridge University in England, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She also attended the Yale School of Drama, and has taught at the University of Sussex, England, the University of Illinois, and the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Burroway has written plays for British television and has been an RCA-NBC Special Fellow in Playwriting at Yale School of Drama, 1960-61. She taught at Florida State University, as Professor of English Literature and co-director of the Writing Program, until she retired in 2002.

Janet Burroway is the author of plays, poetry, essays, children's books, novels, a critic for the New York Times Book Review and columnist for the literary magazine New Letters where she writes a quarterly column, "In a Certain Light". She specializes in Creative Writing (fiction and drama) and modern British literature and drama, and is the author of seven novels including Descend Again, 1960; The Dancer from the Dance, 1965; Eyes, 1966; The Buzzards, 1970 (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize); Raw Silk (runner up for the National Book Award), 1977; Opening Nights, 1985; and Cutting Stone, 1992. Her collections of poetry are But to the Season, 1961, and Material Goods, 1980. The Truck on the Track, 1970, and The Giant Jam Sandwich, 1972, are children's books. Her plays include "Garden Party," 1955; "The Fantasy Level," 1961; "The Beauty Operators," 1968; "Hoddinott Veiling," 1970; "Due Care and Attention," 1973; "Medea With Child" (The Reva Shiner Award), 1993; "Sweepstakes," and "Division of Property" (2001 Arts and Letters Award.) The last three have received readings and productions in New York, London, San Francisco, Hollywood, and various regional theatres. Her most well known work is the widely acclaimed textbook Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, now in its sixth edition. It is the most widely used and respected guide to fiction-writing in America, and is used in more than 300 U.S. universities and colleges

Burroway has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a Carolyn Benton Cockefaire Distinguished Writer-in Residency, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest fellowship, a Lawrence Foundation Award, a 1986 Florida State University McKenzie Professorship, a 1991-1992 Florida State University Distinguished Teaching Award and a 1995-1996 Florida State University Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Award, FSU's highest faculty honor. Since 2002, she has been Professor Emeritus at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida