You work all day
You have no play
You never do get mad
Since you’re so nice
Then I’ll be spice
And never will be bad
Heather Jones was accused of plagiarism in second grade when her teacher deemed her display of rhyme and meter too advanced for someone her age. Undeterred by the accusation, Jones now teaches Composition I and II, Popular Culture in the Arts and Advanced Creative Writing as an adjunct professor at USF St. Petersburg.
An award winning playwright and scriptwriter, Jones’ interest in playwriting started as an undergraduate literature student at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
When given the choice between a research paper or writing a play for her Masterpieces of the Drama class, the decision was easy for Jones. Her professor said her work was something more expected of a playwriting student than of a literature student, but no accusation of plagiarism was made this time.
While Jones was teaching at the University of Tampa, USFSP Literature Program coordinator Dr. Julie Armstrong and Associate Professor Dr. Thomas Hallock came to see one of her plays. After that, Jones took the opportunity to work closer to home with a teaching position at USFSP.
As a writing teacher, Jones wants her students to think of themselves as part of a community, while connecting their writing to what’s going on in the world and discovering who they are as writers. But, most importantly, “I’d like them to come to class,” Jones said.
Jones dislikes the myth that writers are isolated.
“Writing is an act of community. Most of us have people who read our work, most of us participate in the world and of course there’s the audience we write for,” Jones said.
Jones is currently working on a screenplay along with her Advanced Creative Writing students.
She also wants to get her play “Bread & Salt” financed and publish “Murder Ballad,” her play-turned-novel. “Murder Ballad” started as a play called “Knoxville Girl” about a Tennessee town recovering from being taken over by the north and south after the Civil War. “Knoxville Girl” became rewritten as the “Murder Ballad” novel after it was first rewritten as a screenplay, transformed back into a play and performed at Studio@620.
“I’m just not tired of those characters,” Jones said.
