About the Austen Connection
Welcome to the Austen Connection! We’re so glad you’re here.
Our goal with the Austen Connection is to lift up and expand the range of voices contributing to conversations about Jane Austen as we explore how her stories connect to us today and connect us to each other.
If you’re new here, you can join us by subscribing, and all the conversations will drop into your Inbox. You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and follow the Austen Connection podcast here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The book! Pocket Portraits: Jane Austen, the Original Romance Novelist arrives September 30th from Simon & Schuster’s Adams Media! It explores the moments from Jane Austen’s life and times that influenced her novels and their themes of family, agency, philosophy, and love. You can pre-order it here!
The podcast! You can listen to the Austen Connection podcast episodes for free - all episodes and seasons are available for streaming right here, and on Apple and Spotify.
The read-along! We’re reading All of Austen for the 250th year of Jane. Read along with us or learn more here.
Happy everything!
So glad you’re here at the Austen Connection. You can see all of the Austen Connection conversations including the podcast here. If you are not signed up yet you can take a few seconds to sign up, below, to get all of the conversations dropped into your inbox. Join us!
Special series we’ve explored so far include:
Your host and convener is “Plain Jane,” a public-radio journalist and journalism professor with a couple of degrees in Literature who has written about arts for NPR, the BBC, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times.
We believe in the power of talking and listening to each other. And we believe there are important - and really fun - things to talk about when it comes to the stories Jane Austen tells us: Stories about the human experience; stories about faithful sisters, terrible parents, bad boyfriends, and domineering aunts; stories about oppression, marginalization, endurance, integrity, and desire. Stories about love.
Reach out!
My contact: You can reach me directly at [email protected] and at AustenConnect on all the social platforms. For information on the book, there’s [email protected], or the wonderful literary agent Andy Ross at [email protected]. Looking forward to connecting!
How to do this
Simply sign up, and you’ll get regular posts - dropping on Sunday mornings - with conversations, insights, and opportunities for reading together. For free.
And if you want to support this independent project, there are opportunities to do that too. Paid subscribers are the ones who keep this work going, and have access to all content at all times. If you’re a paid subscriber, thank you! You keep this thing dancing!
Become a paying member/subscriber
If you’d like to support the writing and conversations we’re creating, you can sign up for a $5 per month subscription. You can also make a one-off payment of $50 that subscribes you for a year. Either paid option makes you a member of the Austen Connection’s Charlotte Lucas Loyalty Club - and you’ll enjoy the satisfaction of supporting independent writing and dialogue around the topic of Jane Austen’s world.
Thank you for being here - let’s do this!
Teachers, professors, librarians, and readers: The Austen Connection archives and discussions can provide engaging content for students of Austen and literature. If you would like access to archived posts and do not have institutional support or a budget for a paid subscription, please just send a note from your school email address to [email protected], and we’ll provide access to what you need.
All of this is best consumed while curled up on a sofa - maybe, like me, with a cup of tea.
Thank you for being here - let’s explore the unexplored and the unexpected in Austen and her world.
Connect!
Talk to us! Get in touch at [email protected], on Twitter at @AustenConnect, and on Instagram and Facebook at @austenconnection.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
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