Pep-rallies, dope parties, coming-of-age rituals of a small southern town in the early 1970s--the seemingly trite becomes startling as a "perfect teenager" explodes halfway through her first year in college.

Jill McCorkle published her first two novels on the same day in 1984.  Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said: "one suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist.  With July 7th, she is also a full grown one." Since then she has published five other novels—most recently, Hieroglyphics-- and four collections of short stories. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories.  McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature and the Thomas Wolfe Prize; she was recently inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame. McCorkle has taught at Harvard, Brandeis and NC State where she remains affiliated with the MFA Program in creative writing and she is core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars.