life rattle show no. 1215

Presented on Sunday, July 29, 2012

Hosted by Laurie Kallis

featuring

Leah Jones reading her stories
"Small White Button"
"Medieval Dragons and Crayon Cats"
and
"Friday Traffic Jam"

tonight's Show

On tonight's program we present three stories from new Life Rattle Writer Leah Jones.

Leah Jones was born in 1991, the oldest of three girls. She has lived most of her life near Burford, Ontario, a rural community between Hamilton and London, which, Jones points out, is the proud owner of a single traffic light. Jones and her sisters spent their childhood on the farm inherited from their Oma and Opa. The family grew tomatoes and cucumbers in their greenhouses during the warm months and spent the winter months operating Christmas and calendar stores across Southern Ontario.

This combination of small-town values imbued with insight into the consumer industry led Jones to study visual communications and culture, throwing her, thoroughly underprepared, into the big city life. Leah Jones now lives in Oakville with her elementary school sweetheart and her cat.

The stories you will hear tonight and next Sunday come from Jones’s collection “Small Town Girl vs. The Real World.” Her compelling writing, simple and sincere, convincingly portrays the coming of age of a young woman who moves from rural Ontario to attend university in the city.

Delivered as a series of firsts—first bus trip, first pub night, first house party, first car accident, first traffic jam and, almost, a first tattoo—below the surface these stories capture more than the expected trepidation and frustration of that crazy life transition.