Gifts in Action - Kaylie Jones

MEET KAYLIE JONES

Kaylie Jones is the daughter of Illinois-born novelist James Jones (pictured here), author of the bestselling 1951 novel From Here to Eternity. She teaches literature and fiction writing at Long Island University and has published five novels. One of them, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, (Bantam, 1990), won a New York Public Library Young Adult Fiction Award and was the basis of the 1998 film starring Kris Kristofferson. She also chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, administered by Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, which awards $10,000 each year to one writer of an outstanding, unpublished first novel.

HOW SHE GAVE

The Archives/Special Collections unit of Brookens Library at the University of Illinois at Springfield has received a collection of letters written by James Jones. The gift was made by Kaylie Jones.

The collection includes eight letters sent by James Jones to his brother George between 1947 and 1952 that contain many references to From Here to Eternity, which was written and published during that time. Letters to Jones from an uncle and two editors, as well as a collection of newspaper clippings and a charcoal drawing of Jones, are also included in the gift. From Here to Eternity won a National Book Award and the screen adaptation won the Academy Award for Best Film in 1953.

WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE SAYING

UIS Archivist Thomas Wood says the gift will be incorporated into another existing collection related to Jones at the archives (the Handy Colony collection, which is open to researchers, and has been a resource for several books, articles, and papers).