RELEASED: January 14, 2010

By Leigh Ivey

DANVILLE, KY—This CentreTerm, fiction writer Holly Goddard Jones has joined the Centre College community as a writer-in-residence.

Recently, Harper Perennial published Jones's first collection of short stories, Girl Trouble, which contains eight stories that have appeared in a myriad of other collections.

Having grown up in western Kentucky, Jones uses this setting as a backdrop for her fiction. In her stories, small Kentucky towns are brought to life with rich characters and poignant plots.

New York magazine praises Girl Trouble, saying, "Jones roams deeply in familiar short-story territory: small-town betrayal, violence, grief. Fortunately, she also seems to have mastered the genre’s best trick: a charismatic energy, down in the spaces between every word, that makes you feel like she's the first to ever write about these things."

The book has also been lauded by O Magazine, New York Press, Booklist, People magazine, Publishers Weekly and many more.

Having graduated with a master's of fine arts from The Ohio State University, Jones was honored with a Peter Taylor Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference in 2006. A year later, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, given to only six emerging women fiction writers each year.

Dr. Lisa Williams, associate professor of English, also admires Jones's work, which inspired her to encourage the author to spend CentreTerm on campus.

"I first heard about Holly as a possible teacher for CentreTerm through a mutual acquaintance, the poet Adam Day," Williams says. "I started investigating her work at that point and read a couple of stories that I loved, including one in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best: 2007, edited and selected by Edward P. Jones, a terrific, Pulitzer prize-winning fiction writer who has also read at Centre."

While on campus, Jones will give a reading on Jan. 20 at 7 p.m. in the Ewen Reading Room of the Campus Center.

She is also currently leading a fiction-writing workshop for CentreTerm.

"Holly welcomed everyone with open arms," says Elizabeth Trollinger '11, a student in Goddard's writing course. "No matter how much experience any of us has in fiction writing, all of us are enjoying the opportunity to learn and write for these three weeks. Holly treats us as equals and gives us positive, constructive feedback for every exercise we do."

During the three-week class, Trollinger and her fellow students spend time completing writing exercises, reading selected literature and discussing elements of fiction from their nightly readings.

During the final week of the term, Goddard will lead "work-shopping" sessions.

"That's what I'm really looking forward to," Trollinger says. "It's been a very interesting class because not everyone in there is a 'writer.' We've got people who haven't written much, including science majors, as well as people who write all the time and hope to continue writing professionally after college."

Though Goddard will only be on campus for three weeks, the entire Centre community is delighted to welcome such a successful Kentucky author.

"Holly’s one of the very best young fiction writers in the country," Williams says, "and we’re very lucky that she’s here at Centre."

Have comments, suggestions, or story ideas? E-mail leigh.ivey@centre.edu with your feedback.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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