Jan has a daughter, Candace Freeland, who is a photojournalist and musician. My readers tell me all kinds of things about their lives, and I get these long, long letters. I think an author is something like a glorified bartender. "My reward is meeting my readers face-to-face. "Some people finish writing and open a bottle of scotch or a box of chocolates," she says. Currently, one of Jan's chief delights is getting to meet those readers. Jan is quick to assert that there are Mitfords all over the country, those hundreds of towns where readers of Jan's books cherish their own cast of eccentric and beloved characters. You can walk into Sonny's Grill in Blowing Rock and find the same kind of guys who hang around Mitford's Main Street Grill." "Yet, the spirit of my characters is found throughout this real-life village. "None of the people in Mitford are actually based upon anyone in Blowing Rock," says Jan. I have never felt so at home."īlowing Rock is the model for Mitford, and the similarities are strong. "I immediately responded to the culture of village life," says Jan. Recently she left advertising to write books, and moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, a tiny town of 1,800 perched at 5,000 feet in the Blue Ridge mountains. She won assignments in New York and San Francisco, numerous awards, and finally an executive position with a national agency.
Soon she was launched on a forty-year career in advertising. She kept leaving her writing on her boss's desk until he noticed her ability. Her first real opportunity as a writer came at age eighteen when she took a job as a receptionist at an ad agency. Jan knew that she wanted to be a writer, and even wrote a novel at the age of ten.
But living in those confined, bucolic circumstances was one of the best things that ever happened to me." As a young girl I couldn't wait to get off that farm, to go to Hollywood or New York. "I am endlessly grateful I was reared in the country. "On the farm there is time to muse and dream," she says. Her creative skills first came alive when her family moved to a farm. Jan Karon was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, in 1937 ("A great year for the Packard automobile," she says).
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