Jan karon born

Jan Karon comes from a very political family. Conversation flowed freely at home: about Stalin and communism, the Holocaust and Willy Brandt’s kneeling in Warsaw, the Polish People’s Republic, Lech Wałęsa and the freedoms of the EU. There was talk about Radio Free Europe and laughter at Radio Yerevan jokes. Above all, the discussions centred on the irony of the family ending up in Germany, the country of the perpetrators, to which Karon’s father had emigrated in 1984 and his mother in 1988, away from a state socialism that was increasingly perceived as oppressive. Both ambitious individuals, neither of them could imagine a future for themselves in their Polish homeland, especially after the ‘stan wojenny’ was imposed, the Polish martial law that de-legitimised Solidarność from 1981. A career in Poland was out of the question at the time.

This was not to say that the new start in market-oriented West Germany was easy for Mr and Mrs Karon. Especially in the early days, they worked mostly low-paid odd jobs in the catering industry or as harvest workers on vineyards. Like many immigrants, they also struggled to learn German. However, thanks to their willingness to integrate and form new friendships with Germans, who welcomed them with open arms in Rhineland-Palatinate, they soon settled in. Driven by the desire to make the most of their opportunities in their new home, the couple persevered and successfully climbed the economic ladder: she as a bank clerk, he as a mechanical engineer. 

Jan Karon, who was born in Ludwigshafen in 1992 and grew up as an only child in Oggersheim, realised at a young age how hard his parents worked to give him a good life. Perhaps this is precisely why Jan Karon wanted to pursue a career in which he would not be under daily pressure, a job that would fulfil him. 

So he studied what interested him most: history and political science. Scholarships enabled him to broaden his horizo

Born

January 01, 1937

Website

http://www.mitfordbooks.com/

Genre

Contemporary, Christian Fiction, Domestic Fiction

Born Janice Meredith Wilson in 1937, Jan Karon was raised on a farm near Lenoir, North Carolina. Jan knew at a very early age that she wanted to be a writer. She penned her first novel when she was 10 years old, the same year she won a short-story contest organized by the local high school.

At 18, Jan began working as a receptionist for a Charlotte, N.C. advertising agency. She advanced in the company after leaving samples of her writing on the desk of her boss, who eventually noticed her talent. Jan went on to have a highly successful career in the field, winning awards for ad agencies from Charlotte to San Francisco. In time, she became a creative vice president at the high-profile McKinney & Silver. While there, she won the prestigious Stephen Kelly Award, with which the Magazine Publishers of America honor the year’s best print campaign.

During her years in advertising, Jan kept alive her childhood ambition to be an author. At the age of 50, she left her career in advertising and moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, to pursue that dream. After struggling—and failing—to get a novel underway, Jan awoke one night with a mental image of an Episcopal priest walking down a village street. She grew curious and started writing about a character she named Father Tim Kavanagh. Soon, Jan was publishing weekly installments about Father Tim in her local newspaper, The Blowing Rocket, which saw its circulation double as a result. “The installment plan certainly worked for Mr. Dickens”, says Jan.

The installments became Jan’s first Mitford novel, At Home in Mitford. That book has since been reprinted more than eighty times and was nominated three times (1996, 1997, and 1998) for an ABBY (American Booksellers Book of the Year Award), which honors titles that bookstore owners most enjoy recommending to customers. A New Song won the Christy and Gold Medallion awards for outstanding contemporary fiction in 2000. A Common Life, In This Mountain, and She