I first met Kaylie Jones in an elevator at the Ramada Inn in Wilkes Barre, Pa. We were both there for a writer’s conference at Wilkes University. Kaylie’s expression when she’s not smiling or angry or moved is always a sort of grin, probably owing to the jaw line that looks so similar to her famous father’s in old photographs, as if someone just told her a joke or she’s concocting a piece of fiction in her mind that keeps scrolling. And her eyes always seem to be searching in a friendly way, as if maybe the joke or the fiction might be about you at that particular moment. I think we made small talk in the elevator about what I don’t recall. I had no idea who she was.
Later that day, I recognized her standing next to Bonnie Culver, the head of the Creative Writing program at Wilkes. I was asking Bonnie about enrolling in the Master’s degree program that had yet to be launched. Bonnie introduced her as Kaylie Jones. I shook her hand.
“Oh, are you interested in enrolling in the program as well?” I asked her.
She smiled. Bonnie laughed. “This is Kaylie Jones. She’ll be one of our mentors. She’s a writer. A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries? James Jones, the author of From Here to Eternity? This is his daughter.”
I reddened and started to sputter an apology, but Kaylie waved me off. “Forget it,” she said, putting me at ease. “How would you know?”
Kaylie is a unique combination of fiery passion for … well, not just for art but for everything she feels is right (that’s the New Yorker and the Parisian in her) and a sort of Midwestern genuineness, an honesty and a humanity I’m guessing must have come from her father.
With Kaylie, clarity and substance are infinitely more important than style and gaudiness. When you read her work that’s obvious. There are moments of breathtaking description (At night, for entertainment we ate psilocybin mushrooms and watched eighteen-wheelers speed across the distant landscape, the ghosts of their lights trailing behind them for miles like party streamers. I felt squashed between the earth and sky …) nestled in straightforward prose.
That’s what makes her a great teacher. She reels you in when she needs to and pulls no punches in doing so.
Those of us who have been fortunate enough to have Kaylie as an instructor are very loyal to her. That’s not simply because she devotes herself to your work – and she does. The great thing about the Wilkes program is the one-on-one attention you get from your mentors, they shepherd you through your work. But Kaylie always goes above and beyond. She wasn’t above calling me to chew me out if my work was heading in a direction she didn’t like. She was a cheerleader and a friend when things seemed at their blackest, a staunch realist who made me feel capable of reaching great heights with my work, but always with my feet firmly planted on solid ground. In other words, she made me grow.
“Don’t fall into the trap of thinking ‘who am I?’ or ‘who is ever going to care about this thing that someone like me wrote,’” she once told me, knowing full well that my own lack of confidence in my work is one of its greater failings.
We are also loyal to Kaylie because of who she is. She’s inspiring. She’s very down-to-earth and unpretentious. We sat and watched episodes of Lost together, and I’ve listened to her howl when my classmate and friend Dan Burda does one of his goofy impressions. She’s fiery in a way that’s sometimes frightening for me, a pretty average rural Pennsylvania guy. Watch her at a writer’s conference listening to publishers talk about the business – she gets pissed! When she doesn’t like something, whether its politics or poetry, she has no problems with telling you.
One of my earliest memories of her: One day, at a class at Wilkes, she referred to something in The Sun Also Rises. “You’ve all read it,” she assumed. Then she frowned. “How many of you have read it?” Only one or two of us raised our hands. She slapped the table and the voice of this woman, who until that point had seemed serene and smiling at the world, suddenly sharpened. “That’s not enough! If you want to be a serious writer you have to be serious about it. You have to read.” She glared at us.
Above clarity, Kaylie has always seemed to me to value truth. She seems to want honesty in writing above everything else. Recently, I read in her memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me a line from a letter her father had written a publisher who wanted to censor his book. “Writing has to keep evolving into deeper honesty, like everything else, and you cannot stand on past precedent or theory and still evolve.”
I’m printing those words and putting them up by my computer.
Anyway … please send your questions. This is your chance to pick her brain.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Back in the late 90s, when I was just starting out what’s turned into a 13-year career (so far, knock on wood) in journalism, I had a job interview for a reporter position at a relatively large metro daily. I won’t say which one, but it was a century old back then and today it doesn’t exist any more, having merged with the other daily in town years ago. At the interview, the managing editor said he didn’t have much time to talk to me. Then he lectured me for 20 minutes about his newspaper’s proud history and fine staff, asked me one question and then told me to leave some clips with his publisher’s secretary.
This is the first of what I hope will be many interviews with authors. Thanks everyone who submitted questions. The answers are below. If you have followups, let me know and I’ll see that Marlon gets them. And thank you, Marlon!
