Jan Karon was born in the foothills of North Carolina, where, she says, "common speech is uncommonly musical." Descended predominately from Irish, Scottish, and German lines, Jan has a strong interest in the impact of these old cultures on a youthful America.

You can hear much vernacular "music" in Jan's novels, which are set in Mitford, a small town not unlike Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Mountain dialect and mountain humor create much of the Mitford spirit.

In 1988, Jan left a successful career in mainstream advertising and moved to Blowing Rock to live a lifelong dream of writing books. "I love to live where people say 'ain't'," she says, "…where speech is still energized by the past, and holds on to its color and grace. When I was growing up, many still used the old English, 'hain't', which, I'm sorry to say, has nearly vanished."

In This Mountain, the most recent of the Mitford novels, was released this spring and went instantly onto the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, and Washington Post bestseller lists. There will be two more Mitford novels, a bedside companion and a cookbook.

At the Mitford series is ended, she hopes to complete a novel about the building of a mid-eighteenth century Georgian house. "There'll be a lot of 'haint's' in it," she declares.

Jan was born in 1937, "the premier year of the Packard automobile," and was christened Janice Meredith, after the title of a popular novel. In the opening paragraphs of the novel, someone calls "Janice! Janice Meredith!" The little girl doesn't answer, because she is, of course, immersed in the reading of a book.