Jane Alison on Structure and Form

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

We kick off a new season with the brilliant Jane Alison and a wide-ranging conversation about form and structure in fiction and memoir. Brooke and Grant were so inspired by Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane’s book about craft and the theory of writing, that this episode is dedicated to the ideas around structure and form that are at the heart of that book. This is a nerdy, writerly deep dive to welcome listeners to a new season. Also of note is a new feature, Substackin’, which will be rounding out each episode this season. This week: inspiration from Brooke.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Jane Alison is the author of four novels—The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, Natives and Exotics, and Nine Island and the memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, about growing up in a family in which parents traded partners. Her other books are Change Me, translations of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation, and Meander, Spiral, Explode, about the craft and theory of writing. Her newest novel, Villa E—about the collision of architects Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier—is just out on Norton/Liveright. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.