Larsen grew up on U.S. Army posts in Kansas, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Germany. A graduate of Oberlin College, she received her M.A. from Hollins College and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The University of Iowa. She has also lived, worked, and studied in Taiwan and Japan. In 1980, she moved to the Roanoke Valley of Virginia in the United States, where she teaches literature and creative writing at Hollins University. [4]

• Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China (literary translations). BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005.

• These Gardens (art book; poems by Jeanne Larsen, drawings by Jan Knipe) privately printed limited edition, 2003.

• Manchu Palaces (novel). Henry Holt & Co., October 1996; abridged audiotape version: Audio Literature, 1997.

• Bronze Mirror (novel). Henry Holt & Co 1991;, Book of the Month Club 1991; Fawcett (paperback) 1992; Mondadori (Italy) 1992; Centrum (Denmark) 1992. [Bronze Mirror, an opera based on this book, libretto & score by Milton Granger, was premiered by the Georgia State University School of Music, April 19 & 20, 2002]

• Silk Road (novel). Henry Holt & Co. 1989; Heinemann (U.K.) 1989; Book of the Month Club 1989; Fawcett (U.S. paperback) 1990; Mandarin (U.K. paperback) 1991; Centrum (Denmark) 1990; Rizzoli (Italy) 1990; Heyne (Germany) 1991; Divisione Euroclub Italia (Italy) 1991.

• Engendering the Word: Feminist Essays in Psychosexual Poetics (literary criticism). Temma F. Berg, ed.; co-editors, Anna Shannon Elfenbein, Jeanne Larsen, Elisa Kay Sparks. University of Illinois Press, 1989

• Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao (literary translations) Princeton University Press, 1987.

• James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita: A Book of Poems. University Press of Virginia (Associated Writing Programs Poetry Series), 1979.

Larsen is the recipient of a Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship (creative nonfiction)[5], an Individual Artist Fellowship (fiction) from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (literary translation) [6], the William L. Crawford Award for the year’s best new novelist from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and student prizes from the Academy of American Poets.

She has also received residency fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Byrdcliffe Artists Colony, Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Eastern Frontier Society, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. The School for Criticism and Theory and the American Council of Learned Societies/Mellon Foundation have awarded her academic fellowships, and she first went to Taiwan on an Oberlin Shansi teaching-study fellowship.