Janet Burroway

Janet Burroway (born September 21, 1936) is an American author.

Burroway's published oeuvre includes eight novels, memoirs, short stories, poems, translations, plays, two children's books, and two how-to books about the craft of writing.

After studying there for a year (1954–55), Burroway won the Mademoiselle Magazine College Board Contest and spent part of the summer of 1955 in New York City as the magazine's Guest Editor.

Burroway's first poem to be published in a national magazine was “The Rivals,” which appeared in Seventeen when Burroway herself was eighteen (June 1954).

In 1955, her first play, Garden Party, was produced at Barnard College.

Seventeen also published Burroway's first short story, “I Do Not Love You, Wesley,” in January 1957.

In August of that same year, The Atlantic published Burroway's poem “Song.”

Burroway spent 1960–1961 in New Haven, Connecticut after receiving an RCA/NBC scholarship in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.

Often overlooked by critics because it was not published in the United States, the book is structured around the myth of Plato's “Cave.” In 1961, Burroway's first book of poetry, But to the Season, was published by Keele University Press.

After receiving her M. A. from Cambridge, Burroway taught at the University of Sussex from 1965 to 1970.

Burroway married Belgian theatre director Walter Eysselinck and lived in Belgium for two years where she worked as a costume designer.

After Eysselinck took a theatre job in Sussex, the family moved to England, where Burroway had their second child in 1966.

Her fourth novel, The Buzzards, came out in 1969.

It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Critic Elisabeth Muhlenfeld said, “The Buzzards is a political novel of unusual artistry.

Its controlling metaphor is adopted from the first chorus of the Oresteia.

. . . [when] warrior-birds swoop upon a pregnant hare, tearing out the unborn brood.”

That same year the first of Burroway's two children's books, The Truck on the Track, came out in England.

The American edition was published the following year by Bobbs-Merrill.

The book enjoyed a long print run,

Her novel The Buzzards was nominated for the 1970 Pulitzer Prize.

Raw Silk is her most acclaimed novel thus far.

Burroway completed her fourth play, Hoddinott Veiling, in 1970; it was performed that year by ATV Network Television in London.

She left Eysselinck in 1971.

Her second children's book The Giant Jam Sandwich with illustrations by John Vernon Lord was first published in 1972 and had enduring popularity.

She married William Dean Humphries, an artist, in 1978, but the marriage did not last.

The two divorced in 1981.

While Burroway's literary fame is due to her novels, the book that has won her the widest readership is Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, first published in 1982.

In 1993, Burroway married her long-time partner, Utopian scholar Peter Ruppert.

The two spend their time in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and Chicago.

While in England, Burroway finished her first novel, Descend Again.

The couple's oldest son, Timothy Alan Eysselinck, was born in Ghent in 1964 and committed suicide in Windhoek, April 21, 2004.

In 2008, composer Philip Wharton set it to music for narrator and orchestra, and the piece had its debut performance with the Iowa City Symphony.

Now in its 10th edition, the book is used as a textbook in writing programs throughout the United States.

Burroway was born in Tucson, Arizona.

The second child and only daughter of tool and die worker Paul Burroway and his wife Alma (née Milner).

Janet Burroway was educated in Phoenix.

Burroway's intelligence and gift for words resulted in one of her elementary school teachers tutoring her in poetry after class.

She was educated at the University of Arizona, Barnard College of Columbia University, Cambridge University, and the Yale School of Drama.

Her first scholarships were courtesy of local men's clubs, the Elks and the Knights of Pythias, and allowed her to attend the University of Arizona.