About the Author
Jason Lesley
Georgetown resident. Former newspaper editor. Collector of the stories a town tells itself in whispers.
Biography
A Career in Newspapers, A Life in Georgetown
Jason Lesley is retired from a career in media and lives with his wife and three cats in the Georgetown, South Carolina Historic District. A graduate of Catawba College, he spent most of his career in newspapers — and has watched them slowly disappear.
He came to Georgetown to work at the Georgetown Times, and it was there, over years of reporting and editing, that he began collecting the snippets and fragments that would eventually become Sunset Lodge.
The lodge had closed long before he arrived, but its memory had not. It lived in the way certain men changed the subject, in the knowing looks exchanged across diner tables, in the anecdotes that always began with 'I heard that...' and never quite ended.
Sunset Lodge is his first novel — a colorfully imagined story whose sometimes tragic events are softened with a poignancy that makes it unforgettable.
Background
Education
Catawba College
Graduate of Catawba College, with a career built in print journalism.
Career
Georgetown Times
Came to Georgetown to work at the Georgetown Times — and stayed. Spent most of his career in newspapers and has seen them slowly disappear.
Home
Georgetown Historic District
Lives with his wife and three cats in the Georgetown, S.C. Historic District — the same streets that inspired this book.
"He came to Georgetown to work at the Georgetown Times and collected snippets of this story over time."
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On Writing Sunset Lodge
"Every town has a place it doesn't talk about in church. Georgetown had Sunset Lodge. I didn't set out to write a novel — I set out to understand why those stories still mattered, why people still lowered their voices when they told them. The book is what I found when I stopped looking away."
— Jason Lesley
The Novel