Born in Boston in 1942, Jane English grew up in a small town in New England, did undergraduate work at Mount Holyoke College, and began photographing while completing a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Wisconsin.
She then decided not to continue with a science career but to do photography. Her black and white photographs of nature illustrate six books, including a best-selling translation of the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching, published in 1972 by Random House. Her other interests include gardening, skiing, amateur radio and hot air ballooning.
She founded her own publishing business, Earth Heart, in 1985, in order to publish Different Doorway, her book about the implications of being born non-labor cesarean. See the Cesarean Voices website.
After living in Mount Shasta, California for 15 years, Jane moved back to her native New England in 2002.
Since 2007 she has “walked with” the Greenlandic shaman/elder/healer Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq in North America and Europe, and has traveled to Greenland four times. The Ceremony Cards is the result of that time. Her 1999 book Fingers Pointing to the Moon has several autobiographical chapters.