Jackson, Joshilyn

PERSONAL:

Born in FL; married; husband's name Scott; children: two. Education: Georgia State University, Atlanta, B.A.; University of Illinois, Chicago, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—Powder Springs, GA. E-mail—joshilyn@joshilynjackson.com.

CAREER:

Writer. The Players (children's theater group), Atlanta, GA, writer and actor; University of Illinois, Chicago, instructor in English. Worked variously as a dinner-theater actor, staff writer and editor for Post-feminist Playground, writing consultant, ghost writer, and essayist.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Gods in Alabama, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Between, Georgia, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2006.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Grand Central Pub. (New York, NY), 2008.

Short fiction published in numerous publications, including TriQuarterly, and Calyx.

SIDELIGHTS:

Despite dropping out of college to embark on a career as an actor, Joshilyn Jackson knew from an early age that writing was in her blood. "I always had a story going in my head. And I had imaginary friends much longer than I want to admit," Jackson shared in an interview with Publishers Weekly contributor Lucinda Dyer. After several years of acting in regional theater productions and with a traveling dinner-theater troupe, Jackson began writing her own plays. She returned to college to earn bachelor's and master's degrees in English, and soon began work on her first novel. Gods in Alabama was published in 2005 and tells the story of Arlene Fleet, a young southerner who has fled her small town for Chicago as part of a pact with God—she vows to lead a moral life in exchange for keeping her secret murder of the local high school quarterback under wraps. She is forced to face her demons—and her racist family—when her secret threatens to be revealed. Said Jackson of her protagonist to BookPage Web site contributor Jay MacDonald: "She wants honesty, she wants goodness, she's yearning for goodness. I think that ultimately makes her a really likable person, because we all do crappy things. It's the people who keep trying to choose what is right that you like. We all screw up."

Kaite Mediatore wrote in a review for Booklist: "Cleverly disguised as a leisurely paced southern novel, this debut rockets to the end, even as the plot turns back on itself, surprising characters and readers alike." Library Journal contributor Rebecca Kelm remarked: "Forget steel magnolias—meet titanium blossoms in Jackson's debut novel, a potent mix of humor, murder, and a dysfunctional Southern family." A Publishers Weekly reviewer described Gods in Alabama as a "frank, appealing debut," commending Jackson's "genuine affection for the people and places of Dixie." Bernadette Adams Davis commented on a Bookreporter.com Web site review that "among Jackson's shining accomplishments is the strength of her characters' voices…. This is a promising debut, and Jackson has the potential to become an important southern author."

Jackson's sophomore release, Between, Georgia, is also set in the Deep South and follows two feuding families over fifty years. When asked to describe her second novel by a Southern Literary Review interviewer, Jackson remarked, "People ask me if it is ‘like’ Gods in Alabama, and I don't know how to answer that. The plot, the characters are nothing like Gods in Alabama. It's a different book, but at the same time, I think it's pretty obvious I wrote it. It's that same odd blend of humor and violence."

With her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Jackson returns once again to the setting she knows and loves best: the South. This book combines elements of family drama, mystery, and ghost story, all with the southern flair and flavor that is Jackson's trademark style. One summer night, Laurel Hamilton, a high-end quilter who lives in Florida with her husband and child, sees the ghost of a young girl in her bedroom. When she follows the phantom, it leads her to her bedroom window overlooking the yard and the swimming pool below, where Laurel can clearly see a body floating in the water. The dead girl turns out to be Molly, the friend of Laurel's thirteen-year-old daughter Shelby. The police rule the death an accident, but Laurel is not convinced, sure that the girl's ghost had been attempting to give her a message. Shelby's devastated reaction to her friend's death adds to Laurel's concern. Sure the girl was murdered, Laurel decides to investigate on her own, a decision that puts her at odds with her husband David, particularly when Laurel seeks out her estranged sister Thalia. An actress, Thalia has her own ways of dealing with things, and while they may differ greatly from Laurel's, Laurel desperately needs her sibling's emotional support. As the book progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that Laurel has a habit of avoiding reality, and that burying herself in fantasy is her favorite means of avoidance. The tense situation leads to several subplots, including Laurel's belief that her husband is cheating on her and Thalia's revelations regarding certain family members.

Although critics disagreed regarding which aspects of the novel truly made it shine, most agreed in their overall opinion that Jackson's third novel is a success. In a review for Booklist, contributor Kristine Huntley commented that "a veritable southern gothic, Jackson's fluid, masterful novel builds to an exciting, if somewhat over-the-top finish." Peggy Tibbets, writing for Reviewer's Bookwatch, remarked that "Jackson's vivid characters and spellbinding prose—you can almost hear the drawl and smell the earthiness—weave a tale as intricate and fascinating as one of Laurel's quilts." In a contribution for MBR Bookwatch, reviewer Danielle Feliciano observed: "Though all of the characters in this book were artfully written, I feel the main character isn't a person; rather, the theme of escape and lies. What lies do we tell ourselves in order to get through each day? Further, are the lies we tell ourselves worse than those we tell others?" According to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, "what makes this novel shine are its revelations about the dark side of Southern society and Thalia and Laurel's finely honed relationship." USA Today reviewer Ann Oldenberg wrote that "the story builds to an exciting and violent ending, one that surprises yet seems to fit."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2005, Kaite Mediatore, review of Gods in Alabama, p. 14; December 1, 2007, Kristine Huntley, review of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, p. 21.

Library Journal, March 1, 2005, Rebecca Kelm, review of Gods in Alabama, p. 78.

MBR Bookwatch, February 1, 2008, Danielle Feliciano, review of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

Publishers Weekly, January 24, 2005, Lucinda Dyer, "Joshilyn Jackson: Gods in Alabama," p. 119; February 28, 2005, review of Gods in Alabama, p. 41.

Reviewer's Bookwatch, April 1, 2008, Peggy Tibbetts, review of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

USA Today, March 18, 2008, "‘Swimming’; Pools Murder, Family Secrets," p. 03.

ONLINE

BookPage,http://www.bookpage.com/ (September 28, 2005), Jay MacDonald, "Get over It! Joshilyn Jackson's Debut Novel Is Forthright, Frank, and Funny," author interview.

Bookreporter.com,http://www.bookreporter.com/ (September 28, 2005), Bernadette Adams Davis, review of Gods in Alabama.

Southern Literary Review Online,http://www.southernlitreview.com/ (September 28, 2005), author profile and interview.