Kaylie Jones Biography

American novelist (born 1960)

Kaylie Jones (born August 5, 1960 in Paris, France) is an American writer, memoirist and novelist.

Biography

Jones is the daughter of National Book Award-winning novelist James Jones (From Here to Eternity), and Gloria Jones, a former actress and stand-in for Marilyn Monroe. Kaylie Jones grew up in Paris, France, and Sagaponack, New York. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Columbia University School of the Arts.

She has taught in the public schools of New York City through Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and has organized a symposium at Southampton College in memory of her father, who died in 1977.

In 1998, Jones' book A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (published in 1990) became a Merchant Ivory film. The film was directed by James Ivory and starred Leelee Sobieski as Channe (the protagonist in the novel).

Lies My Mother Never Told Me (2009), a memoir, describes her life as the child of a celebrated author and a beautiful, compe*ive and witty mother, who became an editor at Doubleday with her friend, Jacqueline Kennedy On*is. Kaylie Jones's relationship with her mother became more combative after her father's death in 1977.

In 2011, Jones was instrumental in publishing an uncensored edition of her father's From Here to Eternity. Her essay, "Judite", appears in the anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting (2013), published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Jones helped found the MFA Program in Writing at Long Island University, which is now a part of the Stony Brook University Southampton Campus, and the MFA Program in Writing at Wilkes University. She teaches memoir, literature and fiction writing at both universities.

Personal life

Jones is married to Kevin Heisler and has a daughter, Eyrna, born in 1997.

Works

• As Soon as It Rains (Doubleday, 1986)
• Quite the Other Way (Doubleday, 1989)
• A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (Bantam Books, 1990)
• Celeste Ascending (HarperCollins, 2000)
• Speak Now (Akashic, 2003)
• Lies My Mother Never Told Me (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2009)

References

External links

• Official website
• Jones bio at Harper Collins
• Holden, J. Z. "The Beautiful Creator - Kaylie Jones," Hamptons.com (July 20, 2006)
• Lybarger, Dan. "Keeping up with the Joneses: An Interview with Kaylie Jones," Pitch Weekly (Jan. 14-20, 1999). Archived at TipJar.com.