Diana Birchall

Diana Birchall worked for many years as a story analyst for Warner Bros Studios, reading novels to see if they would make movies. Reading popular manuscripts went side by side with a lifetime of Jane Austen scholarship, and resulted in her writing Austenesque fiction both as homage and as close study of the secret of Jane Austen’s style. She is the author of Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma and Mrs. Elton in America, as well as In Defense of Mrs. Elton, and hundreds of short stories. Her Austenesque comedy plays have been performed in many cities, with “You Are Passionate, Jane,” a dialogue between Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte in Heaven, being presented at Chawton House Library in England.

Diana has also written a scholarly biography of her grandmother, Onoto Watanna, the first Asian American novelist, and has lectured widely about her books at universities including Yale, Columbia, and NYU. Diana grew up in New York City, and now lives in Santa Monica, California with her poet husband Peter and three cats, Pindar, Martial, and Catullus. Her son Paul is an island librarian.