Bedtime stories and learning to read at the age of three were only seeds in the ground that would one-day blossom into something special.

Years of hard work paid off for Jana Giles when she received news that her essay would be published in one of the most prestigious journals in the world.

“I was very excited and absolutely thrilled,” said Giles, an assistant professor of English.

Giles’ essay, “Can the Sublime Be Postcolonial? Aesthetics, Politics and Environment in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide” was published in the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry.

Giles’ accomplishment was nothing short of hard work, but she gives all the credit to her upbringing.

“It helped that when I was growing up we didn’t have cell phones and we didn’t watch much TV in my house,” said Giles.

Raised in the country, Giles said she had to find ways to entertain herself. Her closest companions were her parents, her sister, and books.

“I developed a passion for writing because I developed a passion for reading,” said Giles.

Giles holds her parents responsible for this, as they would read her bedtime stories every night before she went to sleep.

Giles went to Chicago to attend The Modern Language Association Convention, where she met the editor of the Cambridge Journal.

“It was a combination of the right place and right timing,” said Giles.

However, Giles said if she had not already been working on her essay in advance, the opportunity for her work to be published would have been limited.

“Sometimes you just have to be persistent and keep building little by little,” said Giles.

Giles said students who are interested in writing and having their work published one day, should start now by networking with those around them.

“I talked to my professors and asked them about the publishing industry. I didn’t wait until I had a job to start publishing,” said Giles.”

Giles said she appreciates the things she  learned throughout this process.

Though her essay involved many theories, it had an overall message.

“What I was really trying to say was that novels can give us possible solutions for real world problems,” said Giles.

Cameron Irby is one of Giles’s former World Literature students who said he is very proud of her achievement.

“It shows that ULM professors can have a greater reach than just the local campus,” said Irby.

Irby said our English Department is growing to be a global force in the study of English language.