CHINA GROVE — Honored for both her literary achievements and her volunteer contributions, Jan McCanless earned the Women of Empowerment Award.

“It’s very flattering,” she said. 

As a writer, you don’t write expecting to receive an award, but she did note that it means a great deal.

“It’s very prestigious,” McCanless continued. “It’s a good award, and it’s nice to be recognized for your efforts.”

And she did agree that it was even more special to be only one of two women from North Carolina to have received this honor.

“That shocked me,” she shared, and “it’s very humbling.”

And while she wasn’t told who the second North Carolina recipient was, McCanless did learn there had only been two in the state.

A ceremony is scheduled to be held in New York to make the presentations to each of the recipients; however, McCanless noted she would be unable to attend and asked that they send her award to her.

In addition to the Women of Empowerment Award, which comes from the Professional Organization of Women of Excellence Recognized, she was selected for Who’s Who this year and has been nominated for the Cadmus Literary award.

Born in Atlanta and moving to Salisbury with her family at the age of 17, she attended Catawba College and trained at Rowan Hospital as a medical technologist. 

She married and her husband Bob was with government service for a while. They settled in China Grove around 1971. She left work when their three children were born, going back to work in the late ’70s to teach at South Rowan High School.

McCanless said she has always written. The daughter of a publisher, she had been around books since the age of four, and her father encouraged her to write.

While McCanless was in high school, she wrote a book which didn’t get published; however at age 15, her dad brought home a book asking her to read and review it, which she did and which garnered her first published work as the review was printed on the back of the book.

“That just thrilled me to pieces, and so I began from there,” McCanless said.

And now, she has 25 bestselling books, five of which came out this year, plus she freelances for many publications, she noted, some of which include Senior Savvy magazine, six national magazines, and currently has something submitted to Reader’s Digest.

In the past she has sold jokes to Saturday Evening Post, been published in the Baltimore Herald, freelanced for the Salisbury Post and written for a magazine in Hickory.

Her books are of various genres, ranging from mysteries to children’s books and a cookbook, but they all contain some humor in them, McCanless said.

She especially loves her novels, she noted, “because the characters are so quirky and loveable. I’m not into gore or horror. My murder mysteries, yes, there’s a murder that takes place, but my books concentrate more on the solving of the killing. It’s interesting to see where the characters take you in a book. Your characters absolutely lead you where you’re going to go in your manuscript.”

The cookbook, she said, is a little more than just a cookbook as it contains some funny stories interspersed with the different recipes.

McCanless has been promoting these five new books, which has kept her busy with book tours and more, but she said, “I’ve always got plots running around in my head, so it won’t be long till I take pen to paper again.”

Once a new book is published, she has a list of people who pay for one to be mailed with more emails coming asking to be added to that list. Therefore, McCanless said, she does a lot of mailing.

Plus she participates in book signings and book fairs all over with several scheduled for March of 2024. One will be held March 9 in Lexington and another at Park Road Books in Charlotte on March 16. 

People can get her books directly from McCanless by visiting her website at http://www.janmacbooks.com or by emailing her at janmccanless@aol.com.

Books are also available at the Rowan Public Library and can be purchased from Amazon, from the publisher, Empower Publishing in Winston-Salem and GG’s Arts Frames Gifts in Statesville.

McCanless has a faithful following as many who have read her books, which have been called addictive, let her know how much they enjoy them and want to immediately know when the next will be available. She said they get involved in her characters, and she has been balled out when she kills off someone’s favorite character.

“When you hear people making comments about characters in your books, you know you have done well, McCanless noted”

Just knowing how much her books are enjoyed and appreciated for being a fun read and family friendly is special to her.

In addition to her literary achievements, McCanless’ civic involvement led to her being awarded the Women of Empowerment.

She shared how, years ago, the Status of Women Council was being established and she was asked by the mayor at that time to serve as China Grove’s representative on the council. Conducting research, she said it was discovered there was a lot of family violence in the county. 

“So I gathered up a bunch of community leaders and we met and we formed this organization, the Rowan County Family, Rape, Child Abuse Prevention, and I served as its executive director and we decided we were going to do something about child abuse and family violence in the county,” McCanless said.

From there, she was appointed to the national committee for the prevention of child abuse, which was based in Chicago. North Carolina headquarters was in Raleigh and she was appointed there and made president of that organization and was elected president for the Status of Women Council. 

“I was doing a lot of work for child abuse, was flying all over the country, making speeches, one thing and another, and so from that grew out the Rape Crisis Council in Rowan County,” she said. Now they have a safe house, she pointed out.

“It’s very gratifying to see that.”

They have an executive director, and while she is not directly involved at the present time, McCanless does follow them, she noted.

For her work with child abuse prevention, she earned the Woman of the Year for Rowan County award in 1978.

“But it was a collaborative effort, the whole Status of Women Council got behind this and we didn’t want to see these children go hungry or be abused,” McCanless shared. 

Additional honors she has received over the years have included being nominated for international woman of the year in 2005, receiving The Mother Vine award for best essays in 2013, volunteer of the year for three years running while serving with the Rowan County Community Resource Council and Service To Seniors award in 2016 for her contributions at the Rufty-Homes senior center.

Community work and writing are very important to McCanless and that literary gene continues to run through the family, McCanless said. Her dad was publisher, and she and a brother, who is now deceased, both became writers and now she has a grandson who is writing children’s books and adventure books.

“It’s just a lot of fun. I enjoy writing. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it,” she shared.