Jane Hamilton

Jane Hamilton (born July 13, 1957) is an American novelist.

Jane Hamilton grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, the youngest of five children. She won prizes for poetry and short stories throughout high school and college, but was always told that being a writer would not be a viable career. Because she was not a good speller, she did not believe she could be a copy editor or editor either. Hamilton graduated from Carleton College in 1979 as an English major. She interned with Dell Publishing for Children after college with intentions of becoming an editor.

Despite rejection from the graduate programs she applied to, Hamilton kept writing in her spare time. In 1983, her short story, “My Own Earth” launched her career when an intern pulled it from a slush pile and passed it up to Harper’s Magazine editor, Helen Rogan. The publication of “My Own Earth” was soon followed by more success when her short story “Aunt Marj’s Happy Ending” was published by Harper’s Magazine in December 1983. "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending" later appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1984

Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, was published in 1988 and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award in 1989.The Book of Ruth was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1996, and it was the basis for a 2004 television film of the same title.

In 1994, she published A Map of the World, which was adapted for a film in 1999 and the same year was also an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her third novel, The Short History of a Prince, published in 1998, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998. This book was also shortlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize. In 2000, Hamilton was named a Notable Wisconsin Author by the Wisconsin Library Association.

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