Oakland, CA - Mills College announced today that Sian Jones, a 2004 graduate of the Mills MFA program in writing, was selected for inclusion in the forthcoming Best New American Voices 2006. One of only 20 writers selected from among more than 200 nominees, Ms. Jones was chosen for her story, “Pilot,” written in Mills graduate workshops last year.

Each year, the competition highlights the best stories written in MFA workshops throughout the country.

According to Cornelia Nixon, W.M. Keck Foundation Professor of Creative Writing at Mills, “This is a spectacular success for Sian, as she is the first Mills nominee to win this prestigious award.”

Her story “Pilot” concerns two grownup children and their mother, who is felled by a stroke and returns with her fluent linguistic abilities intact but garbled. Only the daughter seems able to understand the mother’s strange utterances, conversing with her in the hospital and eventually in a phone call in which her mother seems entirely restored—only to learn later, from her resistant brother, that she (the daughter) had descended for that moment into gibberish herself. This story unfolds with wit and compassion, and is funny and moving by turns.

This bright young writer came to Mills the year another Best New American Voices winner, Amanda Davis, joined the faculty (before her tragic death in the spring of 2003). Among the many distinguished writers on the Mills writing faculty are recent Whiting Fellow Victor LaValle and Lannan Fellow Michelline Aharonian Marcom. Yiyun Li, 2004 winner of a Pushcart Prize and The Paris Review Plimpton Award for New Writers will begin teaching at Mills in the fall. The Mills MFA program endeavors to challenge and support a wide range of writers, of all ages and styles.

PRESS CONTACT:
Deborah Dallinger
Communications Consultant
(925) 788-9131