Powder Springs author Joshilyn Jackson is St.John Flynn's guest this month, talking and taking your calls about her second novel Between, Georgia (Warner Books, 2006).

From the Book Jacket

Nonny Frett understands the meanings of "rock" and "hard place" better than any woman ever born. She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy." She's got two men: her husband, who's easing out the back door; and her best friend, who's laying siege to her heart in her front yard. She has a job that holds her in the city, and she's addicted to a little girl who's stuck deep in the country. To top it off, she has two families: the Fretts, who stole her and raised her right; and the Crabtrees, who lost her and can't forget that they've been done wrong.

In Between, Georgia, population 90, a feud that began the night Nonny was born is escalating, and a random act of violence will set the torch to a thirty-year-old stash of highly flammable secrets. This might be just what the town needs, if only Nonny wasn't sitting in the middle of it…

About the Author

Joshilyn Jackson was born in the Deep South and raised by a tribe of wild fundamentalists who taught her to be virtuous and upright. Unfortunately, it didn't take, and Ms. Jackson dropped out of college to pursue a career as an actor. She worked in regional repertoire and traveled the southern third of the country with a dinner theatre troupe, but after a few years she realized that she preferred writing plays to acting in them.

She decided both virtue and an education were worth the work, so she went back to college to study English literature and graduated with honors from Georgia State. She then moved to Chicago where she earned her MA in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ms. Jackson went on to teach English at UIC, and, in her first year, she won the Student's Choice Award for Best English Instructor.

After graduate school she returned to her hometown and married the boy next door. She currently lives just outside of Atlanta with her husband, their two children, a hound dog, and a twenty-three-pound, one-eyed Maine Coon cat named Franz Schubert.

Her short fiction has been published in literary magazines and anthologies including TriQuarterly and Calyx, and her plays have been produced in Atlanta and Chicago. Her bestselling debut novel, gods in Alabama (Cover to Cover, July 2005) won SIBA's 2005 Novel of the year Award and was a #1 BookSense pick. Between, Georgia was also a #1 BookSense pick, making Jackson the first author in BookSense history to receive #1 status in back to back years. Jackson read the audio version herself, winning a Listen Up award from Publisher's Weekly and making Audiofile's Best of 2006 list. Both books were chosen for the Books-A-Million Book Club. Her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, will be published by Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) in March 2008.

To find out more about Joshilyn, visit her website at www.joshilynjackson.com

Praise for Joshilyn Jackson and Between, Georgia

• "Between, Georgia is a small miracle, and Nonny Frett is the most engaging woman who ever lived in the pages of a book. Joshilyn Jackson is an enormously talented writer."-Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetwater Creek

• "One of this decade's most commendable novels. Every now and then a remarkable writer, following in the footsteps of great authors, comes along to reenergize American fiction. So it is with Joshilyn Jackson. ...Jackson's novel brilliantly explores abstractions - redemption, love and grace - through the most compelling characterizations to be found in contemporary fiction. Between, Georgia is an exemplary novel by a singular writer who is in full command of the art of story telling. Don't miss it!"-Bookpage

• "In her accomplished second novel, Jackson sweeps the reader away to a place where gravel crunches underfoot and the smell of corn bread wafts in the air. Between, a tiny dot on the Georgia state map, is oversized when it comes to personalities. The plot is precise and sweet, and Jackson includes the perfect ingredients: quirky characters, a picturesque setting and ample surprises. Evocative and lovingly crafted."-Kirkus *starred review*

• "Jackson returns with a second quirky and touching novel about the South. Jackson has been compared to Fannie Flagg, and rightfully so; her characters are vivid and lovable, put in situations that are so hard to explain that it's just easier to pass the book lovingly along to a friend...A climactic ending with perfect story resolution makes this book tidy and uplifting, and even the most cynical reader will surely smile as the back cover closes."-Booklist *starred review*