Sunshine, secrets, and swoon-worthy stories—June's featured reads are your perfect summer escape.
Kaylie Jones
Kaylie Jones was born in Paris, France and attended French schools until she returned with her family to the U.S. in 1974. Her father was the novelist James Jones.
Kaylie began to study Russian as her third language at age 8, and continued to study the language and literature through her four undergraduate years at Wesleyan University and her two years at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she received her MFA in Writing. Her first novel, As Soon As It Rains, was published in 1986. She continued her Russian studies at the Harriman Institute at Columbia (1986-87), and spent six weeks at the Pushkin Institute for Russian Studies in Moscow in the summer of 1984, and six months there in the winter and spring of 1987, which resulted in her second novel, Quite the Other Way (Doubleday, 1989). While writing both novels, Kaylie worked at Poets & Writers, Inc. in the Readings/Workshops Program and later as the assistant to the Director of Development. She fell in love with the poetry written by underprivileged children in the workshops she helped fund. As a result, Kaylie became a Writer in Residence in the NYC public schools through Teachers & Writers Collaborative.
She taught Fiction workshops at The Writer’s Voice from 1988 to 1996, then became involved in the creation of the MFA Program in Writing of LIU’s Southampton campus, where she still teaches Literature and Fiction Writing. Between novels, Kaylie writes short stories and screenplays. Her screenplay Anor of Aquatain, written with her husband, Kevin Heisler, won the gold medal at the Houston Film Festival, while her original screenplay Limbo, won a New York Women In Film Screenwriting Award.