ANITA GAIL JONES is a visual artist and writer, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. Her Fine Arts degree is from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. In the early 90s, writing and illustrating children's stories lead Jones to oral tradition storytelling and working in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist-in-residence, in addition to tailoring storytelling programs for libraries, corporations and private clients.

Jones is co-founder and Executive Director of The Gaines-Jones Education Foundation, a family charity based in Novato, CA and created in 2002 memory of her late mother, father and sister. the organization advocates for youth inside the American education system and provides annual college scholarships to African-American students in southwest Georgia and the San Francisco Bay Area. www.gaines-jones.org

Jones’ publications include ~ Gardening Among Friends: Practical Essays by Master Gardeners, Edited by Barbara J. Euser; gardening articles for The Marin Independent Journal; The Waiting Room, an essay for Left Coast Writers Roadwork, and various articles for The Women's Eye website.

Her upcoming debut novel, THE PEACH SEED, represented by Steve Ross Agency, was acquired by Retha Powers at Holt for publication on August 1, 2023. An earlier version of the work was a Novella semi-finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition; and was selected as a 2021 Top Ten Finalist in the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

THE PEACH SEED will be in stores on AUGUST 1, 2023 • AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD •

In a two-book pre-empt, RETHA POWERS at Holt acquired from STEVE ROSS at Steve Ross Agency world rights to the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction finalist ANITA GAIL JONES’ THE PEACH SEED, a sweeping multigenerational novel told through parallel storylines which show the origins of a south Georgia family’s tradition of giving carved peach seed monkeys to all male descendants and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle with the legacies of America’s Civil Rights Movement and the far reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, S.C.

The second book, tentatively entitled HEADRAG, is a coming-of-age novel set in 1985 New York City revolving around a young Black model from southwest Georgia who uses a frayed scarf her grandmother gave her to slick her hair down, making it chic for runway shows. In time she sees this headrag––and the stories it call forth––as an heirloom; a symbol of her heritage from cotton fields to day-work, to fashion shows.

Oral tradition storyteller • Hedgebrook Women's Writer-in-Residence Alumna • Short story, HAND-ME-DOWN BLUES, won an award from The Pinch literary journal. An earlier version of debut novel manuscript, PEACH SEED MONKEY, was named a Novella semi-finalist in Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition • 2019-2019 Affiliate Artist at the San Francisco Bay Area Headlands Center for the Arts • PEACH SEED MONKEY was selected as a 2021 Top Ten Finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.