Devoney Looser, Professor of English, Jane Austen Scholar, & Roller Derby Player

I'm Devoney Looser, Professor of English at Arizona State University. I also go by Stone Cold Jane Austen, especially when I'm on roller skates.

I'm incredibly grateful to have been named a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. I'll be completing a book on the once-celebrated, now largely forgotten sister novelists, Jane and Anna Maria Porter, during my fellowship year. Hear more about that project here.

I'm the author or editor of seven books on literature by women, and my recent writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The TLS, Salon, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Entertainment Weekly. I also have the great good fortune to have a badass roller derby alter ego, Stone Cold Jane Austen. I firmly believe Jane Austen would be okay with that, as I suspect she, like her heroine Elizabeth Bennet, delighted in anything ridiculous.

I grew up in Minnesota, where postage-stamped sized backyards turned into winter ice rinks using garden hoses, and cold weather brought opportunities to snuggle up and read. Now I live in the desert, near a fantastic roller rink, and I have the privilege of teaching women's writings and the history of the novel to college students. I met my husband (also an English professor and Austen scholar) over an argument about Mansfield Park. Together we're raising tween sons who find Austen tolerable but un-tempting.

If you'd like to get in touch, check out the "Contact" menu. I'd love to hear from you. And enter your email address below to subscribe to my newsletter, for the latest on Austen, women writers, and pop culture, with a little roller derby to keep up to speed . . . . Long live Jane Austen, after her bicentenary!