{"id":4268,"date":"2023-10-24T08:43:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T14:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/?p=4268"},"modified":"2023-11-01T11:34:14","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T17:34:14","slug":"jcjc-alumnus-author-returns-to-laurel-for-author-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/news\/jcjc-alumnus-author-returns-to-laurel-for-author-event\/","title":{"rendered":"JCJC alumnus & author returns to Laurel for \u201cAuthor Event\u201d<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ELLISVILLE- Jones County native, former New York City resident and current Athens, Georgia resident, Noel Holston will be returning to Laurel as the guest author for the Laurel-Jones County Library\u2019s \u201cAuthor Event.\u201d  The 1968 Jones County Junior College alumnus is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and critic, songwriter and photographer, who has recently published his second book, As I Die Laughing: Snapshots of a Southern Childhood<\/em>. Holston will be sharing some of the stories he wrote about growing up \u201cfree-range\u201d in Laurel, Ellisville and the Pendorff community at the Laurel-Jones County Library on Thursday, November 9, from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cAs tickled as I am to have a chance to read chapters from As I Die Laughing<\/em> to people I grew up with, what I really look forward to is the stories they’re going to tell me. Yarns will be swapped, I’m sure,\u201d said Holston,. \u201cI don’t go home as much as I once did now that my parents and extended family have all passed on, but I still get up that way every couple of years. I did a book signing at the library in Laurel in 2020, when my book, Life After Deaf <\/em>was newly published. Any time I visit, I see my only sibling, my younger brother, (a JCJC graduate and retired professor at the University of South Alabama) Tim, who lives in Mobile. We drive up to Jones County for the day. It\u2019s sort of a ritual: We visit our folks\u2019 graves to pay respects, go by my grandmother\u2019s old house on 5th Street in Laurel, drive by our family\u2019s house in Pendorff, cruise on down to Ellisville, and eat chili cheeseburgers at Ward’s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Holston\u2019s humorous account of his childhood adventures in Jones County with his boyhood friends, family and residents of Jones County in the 1960s, earned him the nickname, the \u201cMark Twain of Laurel\u201d by reviewers of his new book. Some readers may remember the author\u2019s relatives like his uncle, M.D. \u201cShorty\u201d Holston who owned a car dealership in Ellisville and his first cousins, David and Dr. James Holston. Other friends he remembers fondly include, Freida Gunn Collins, Jim Clark and Eddie Endom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbout half of the stories and sketches are things I\u2019ve been telling for years as a \u2018stand-up\u2019 storyteller. Pretty sure it will amuse most everybody who came of age in the 1960s and \u201870s,\u201d shared Holston.  <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The semi-retired writer\u2019s first book was a memoir called, \u201cLife after Deaf,\u201d which chronicles his efforts to recover from a near total hearing loss in 2010. The book was published in 2019 and continues to sell and make Amazon\u2019s Best Sellers List.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, the author of now two books and a long-time newspaper columnist at Newsday<\/em> in New York City, was inspired by his JCJC teacher and campus newspaper\/yearbook advisor, Hunter \u201cMack\u201d Cole to change course and be a writer. Holston was in Cole\u2019s English class his freshman year at JCJC. After finishing the semester, Cole recruited Holston to be the yearbook editor and to write a column for the student produced, Radionian <\/em>newspaper. His assignment was to write what was \u201cIN\u201d at JC.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cI was supposed to suggest stuff that was \u2018happ\u2019nin\u2019 at the school and elsewhere or what struck my fancy. My output included a review of The Beatles\u2019 then new, \u2018Sgt. Pepper\u2019 album and columns about the blues music revival that was underway, the impact of the murder of Martin Luther King and silly stuff such as trying to calculate whether all the cigarette butts tossed on campus grounds would eventually bury the school. To my shock, I won a state student journalism prize for some sample columns Mr. Cole submitted without telling me!\u201d said Holston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The JCJC 1968 graduate never thought about being a writer before this chance encounter with Cole. He enjoyed \u201cplaying with words\u201d but believed like his parents, that he should pursue a practical career, so he earned a finance degree at USM and then his MBA degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe game changer was editing the USM yearbook, The Southerner<\/em>, which was a paid position I got thanks to my JC Lair <\/em>yearbook experience. I oversaw the 1970 and 1971 yearbooks which led to an invitation to a summer program at Harvard for students involved in campus publications. The encouragement I received there for my writing led me to seek a journalism job rather than something in banking or corporate management. My folks felt like I had run off and joined the circus, but I never regretted my choice. I got paid to write a popular culture, news, politics and social issues column for almost four decades, kind of like my \u2018IN JC\u2019 column but on a national scale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Noel Holston, 1968 JCJC Yearbook<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In 1972, Holston was hired by the Orlando Sentinel<\/em> newspaper as a general assignment reporter. He later became a contributor and editor of its Sunday magazine a year later, and then was asked to be the paper\u2019s TV-Radio columnist. Occasionally, he wrote about music, movies, theater, food, and visual art, but TV became his \u201cmeal ticket.\u201d In 1986, Holston worked in Minneapolis and then New York, in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Newsday<\/em>, he reviewed TV shows, commented on the industry and the electronic media\u2019s impact on society, as well as interviewed and profiled dozens of entertainment and news personalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was great fun, and it was great training for the writing I\u2019m doing now,\u201d said Holston. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, Noel lives in Georgia with his wife, singer-songwriter, Marty Winkler and they have two sons, a stepdaughter, and a couple of grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ELLISVILLE- Jones County native, former New York City resident and current Athens, Georgia resident, Noel Holston will be returning to Laurel as the guest author for the Laurel-Jones County Library\u2019s \u201cAuthor Event.\u201d  The 1968 Jones County Junior College alumnus is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and critic, songwriter and photographer, who has recently published his second … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “JCJC alumnus & author returns to Laurel for \u201cAuthor Event\u201d<\/strong>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4268"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4288,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268\/revisions\/4288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcjc.edu\/jcnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}