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Kentucky native creates Roman tragedy in her home state

By Josh Kegley jkegley@herald-leader.com

This fall, Kentucky native Holly Goddard Jones is reintroducing readers to the Roman tragedy, albeit a localized, modernized and humanized version of the centuries-old genre.

Her new book is Girl Trouble, and her characters are far from the royal denizens of ancient Rome. They are, instead, modern men and women in the fictional town of Roma, Ky.

The name similarity is no coincidence. As a writer, Jones claims to find herself inexplicably inspired by the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, one of William Shakespeare's earliest and most violent plays — considered by most to be one of his least-valuable creations.

"I went with the name Roma because I wanted it to be symbolic of a Western Kentucky town, tie it to Titus Andronicus and turn it into an iconic setting for tragedy," she said.

Jones, 29, is a native of Russellville who now lives in Greensboro, N.C. The University of Kentucky graduate is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina's Greensboro campus.

On Friday and Saturday, Jones will return to Lexington to present alongside nine other writers at the Women Writers Conference.

One of her college mentors, award-winning poet and UK creative-writing professor Nikky Finney, will be reading with Jones at the conference.

Being invited to speak "is the kind of thing I fantasized about when I was an undergraduate but never actually believed would happen, so I'm thrilled," Jones said. "Getting to read with Nikky again — getting to see her again, after years and years — is the best part."

Girl Trouble, a book of eight short stories set in Roma, was released Sept. 1 and is published by Harper Perennial, the paperback imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

The stories explore love, desire, morality, victimhood and gender relations. Reviewers throughout the country have stated their admiration of and fascination with the darkness and hopelessness of the stories.

"I have some fairly macabre impulses," Jones said, in her surprisingly cheerful, girlish voice.

In one story, a high school girls' basketball coach deals with the revelation that his star basketball player is pregnant with his child. In another, a single father must choose between starting a new life with his new lover or remaining loyal to his son, who has been accused of rape.

Sally Kim, executive editor at HarperCollins, thinks the most tragic aspect of the stories is the finality of the characters' situations.

"These characters, whether they are desperate to break out of their situations or undo a wrong they did, intentionally or not, they're stuck," Kim said. "They're destined to go down this path.

"The stories are very dark; they encompass a lot of physical and emotional violence. Yet, after reading these stories as a whole, they're sort of hopeful. I don't know how she does that. That's sort of the magic of Holly Goddard Jones."

Kim worked directly with Jones on Girl Trouble. In 15 years as an editor, Jones' collection is only the second book of short stories that Kim has purchased.

Roma is based on Jones' hometown in Logan County, but only loosely.

"People ask me how much of this book is autobiographical," Jones said. "I say very, very, very little."

The real-life Russellville serves only as a canvas around which to create a bigger fictional picture. The author likens creating a fictional setting to a teenager lying to her parents after a night spent sneaking around.

"Most of us who were effective liars would use a grain of truth and build a fiction around that," she said. "You wouldn't invent a shopping center that doesn't exist and a movie that doesn't exist."

"Fiction comes the same way. There's no reason for me to create every road and building and stone and tree."

Jones lived in Russellville until she was 18, when she enrolled in Western Kentucky University's journalism program. She was a journalism major for one year.

"I wasn't really enough of a people person to report or depend on other people to make a story happen," she said.

When she was 19, her boyfriend, Brandon Jones, was accepted to the architecture program at UK. She wanted to move with him to Lexington, but her parents balked at the idea of the couple living together without getting married. So they wed, which came as a surprise even to Jones.

"I never thought I would get married young," Jones said. "Growing up, I was very hyper-aware of outsiders' perceptions of where I was from. I was very determined not to do anything that was stereotypically Southern or old-fashioned."

While her husband studied architecture, Jones enrolled in UK's English program. She worked part-time in the marketing department at University Press of Kentucky.

Between readings and signings for Girl Trouble and teaching at UNCG, Jones is working on a full-length novel set in Roma. She estimates that she is a quarter to a third of the way through the drafting process.

"She has many, many books in her future," HarperCollins' Kim said of Jones. "This is just the beginning for her."