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![]() My librarian friend was the one who suggested my derby name, Stone Cold Jane Austen. (He’s also an Austen scholar and a professor.) But it was one of my graduate students and a special collections librarian who got me into roller derby. ![]() I even ended up meeting my husband over a conversation about Austen. I went on to get my PhD in English directly after that, so I’ve now had several decades to teach British women’s writings, including Austen, to college students. My mother’s persistence worked on me, because I became the first in my family to graduate from college, with an English major. I love that Austen has been be handed-down that way, too-by aspirational word-of-mouth. She just knew that Austen was an author you were supposed to read, and she wanted me to get an education. ![]() It was only many years later that I learned that my mother had never read it herself. It was maybe the third time that I started Pride and Prejudice that it just clicked somehow, and I was hooked. It became a favorite book. Austen’s language seemed so impenetrable and stiff. ![]() In my case, it was my mother who started it. ![]() Greer: Tell us about a woman from the past who has inspired your writing.ĭevoney: Jane Austen inspires me on a daily basis. Like a lot of Janeites, I discovered Austen’s novels in my teens. ![]()
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