JANE ROPER

A white woman in her forties with long brown hair and bangs.

 

 

 

Jane Roper is the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins, and a novel, Eden Lake. Her novel The Society of Shame will be published by Anchor Books in 2023. Jane’s writing has appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Cognoscenti, and elsewhere, and was included in the anthology Labor Day: True Birth Stories by today’s Best Women Writers. She has taught writing at GrubStreet, Follow Your Art Community Studios, The University of Iowa, and elsewhere and is the host of the author interview series "The Zeitgeist" on A Mighty Blaze. Jane is also a copywriter and brand strategist. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and rad teenage twins.

For more information, see Jane's website.

SESSION: The Rhythm and Structure of Memoir

The most engaging memoirs move seamlessly from specific moments to general significance and back again, striking an artful balance between scene, summary, and exposition, while creating a sense of forward motion that keeps readers turning pages. In this session, we’ll look at excerpts from published memoirs to discover how authors manage to pull off this feat and explore topics including narrative distance, dialogue, transitions, and arc. Texts will include When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.