NEWS

The Lowney Handy Award and Scholarship in Creative Writing was presented this year to Megann Kellum. Marshall High School (Marshall, Illinois) English teacher Amy Gard reviewed more than half a dozen essay applications for the award which includes a $500 scholarship established by Jon Shirota. The award honors Lowney Handy who, along with her husband,… Continue reading Lowney Handy Scholarship Winner Selected

Each year, the James Jones Literary Society sponsors a contest for seniors at area high schools in both Crawford County and in Marshall, Illinois, where Jones was part of the Handy Writers Colony. The essays are responses to James Jones’s short story “The Valentine,” which was first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1963… Continue reading 2021 The Valentine essay winners selected

For today, April 19, only, James Jones' masterful novel, Whistle, is available on Kindle for only $2.99. Four World War II infantrymen recover at an army hospital, and struggle to readjust to the home front, in this New York Times best-seller. https://www.amazon.com/Whistle-World-War-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B004UNGYKS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Whistle%2C+James+Jones&qid=1618843202&s=books&sr=1-1

Last night I watched Episode 3 of the Hemingway documentary on PBS. I'd watched the first two the night before. Very well produced, interesting writers talking about Hemingway's influence, Tobias Wolff and Edna O'Brien among them. But nothing earth-shatteringly new. Already, in the two first episodes, the division between the man and the myth is… Continue reading Kaylie Jones: My father and Hemingway

Kaylie Jones' imagined lunch with her father is included in the collection One Last Lunch: A Final Meal with Those Who Meant So Much to Us. Her essay was written as the malaria-fueled fever dreams of her father, James Jones, who was serving in WWII. One Last Lunch is edited by Erica Heller, daughter of… Continue reading Essay imagines lunch between Kaylie and James Jones