About

Jane Harrington’s career in the literary arts has spanned more than two decades. She has published books for the youth market (Scholastic, Lerner) and currently crafts literary fiction, creative nonfiction and lyric prose. Journals and anthologies showcasing her work include Chautauqua, Feminine Collective, Irish America, Eastern Iowa Review, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene, and others. Her writing has been short-listed for prizes both nationally and internationally, and her novel In Circling Flight was awarded the 2019 Brighthorse Prize and was longlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize. Her newest book, Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance (Black Dog & Leventhal 2025), is a work of historical creative nonfiction. Jane is a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) and currently teaches wordcraft and literature at W&L University and in the Hollins University graduate program.

Featured Work

Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun

2025
WFTR

Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance is the story of seven fabulous, free-thinking salon writers of 17th Century France who wielded their pens as an act of protest and launched a sensation that swept across Europe long before the Brothers Grimm were even born. It was these women—conteuses, they called themselves—who coined the term “fairy tale.” The sixty-plus stories they wrote and published starred strong females on quests that mirrored the challenges the writers themselves faced under the patriarchy, specifically the misogynistic and homophobic reign of Louis XIV. Over the century-long spell that their tales were popular, however, forces would work to erase them, to cast them from the fairy tale canon in favor of male tellers. The headstrong princesses that had lived on the conteuses’ pages were replaced by the types we call classic: the obedient Cinderella, naive Snow White, silent Little Mermaid, and flat-out unconscious Sleeping Beauty. But now the salon sisters’ forgotten characters are awakened in revamped tellings of a dozen of the original tales. Revived, too, are the authors themselves, in deeply researched histories by fairy tale scholar Jane Harrington, who wields her own pen in tribute to the spicy, oft-harrowing lives of these women who shaped one of our most beloved literary traditions.

Other Works

  • In Circling Flight

    2022

  • EXTREME PETS!

    2008

  • My Best Friend, the Atlantic Ocean, and Other Great Bodies Standing Between Me and My Life With Giulio

    2008

  • Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe

    2006

  • Lucy's (Completely Cool and Totally True) E-Journal

    2001

Awards and Recognition

  • IN CIRCLING FLIGHT-- Longlisted for the 2023 Crook's Corner Prize for Best Debut Novel Set in the American South
  • IN CIRCLING FLIGHT -- Winner of the 2019 Brighthorse Prize in the novel
  • "The Visits" -- Long-listed for Fish Publishing Short Memoir Prize 2018; honorable mention, Asheville Writers' Workshop Hard Times contest, 2018.
  • "Settling" -- Short-listed, 2016 Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award, Wexford, Ireland; published in Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene (West Virginia UP 2019)
  • "Speranza" -- Runner up, Portable Stories Contest, 2016
  • "Way Out Farm" -- Honorable mention, 2016 Leap Frog Press Fiction Contest (for a novella)
  • "Flight" -- Finalist, 2015 Dana Award for the Novel
  • "Into the Air" -- First place, Writerhouse/C-Ville Creative Nonfiction Contest (2014)
  • "All God's Children Gonna Take a Ride" -- Second place, 2014 Virginia Golden Nib short story competition (chapter level); “Highly Recommended” work, Ireland’s 2014 Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize competition
  • "Dear John, I've fallen for a dog," -- Short-listed, Fish Publishing 2013/14 Short Story Prize
  • "Watching--the Fall" -- Long-listed, Fish Publishing Short Memoir Contest (2013)
  • "Moving Day" -- Long-listed, Anam Cara, Ireland, Short Fiction Contest (2012)
  • EXTREME PETS -- 2009 selection, Children's Book Council & International Reading Association; 2008 ALA "Quick Picks For Reluctant Young Adult Readers; 2007 Washington Post "Book of the Week"
  • MY BEST FRIEND, THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, AND OTHER GREAT BODIES STANDING BETWEEN ME AND MY LIFE WITH GIULIO -- 2008 selection, Junior Library Guild