AHOSKIE – A lifelong resident of Northampton County has joined the news team at Roanoke-Chowan Publications.

Holly Taylor, who resides in the Galatia community, launched her newspaper career on Monday, March 13. She was hired as a staff writer/general assignment reporter.

“Speaking on behalf of Roanoke-Chowan Publications, we welcome Holly to our family,” said Cal Bryant, Editor of the print media firm, which includes the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald, Gates County Index, The Shopper, and Front Porch Living Magazine.

“We became aware of Holly’s writing talents last fall and attempted at that time to bring her onboard here at Roanoke-Chowan Publications,” Bryant added. “However, she was working at that time for an agricultural firm and due to the nature of that work, particularly during the critical fall harvest season, she remained committed to that employer. That alone spoke volumes of her unwavering loyalty and moral character, traits that we seek in community newspaper journalism.

“Now that we have her in our family, we feel the next generation of our news team is here; one that our readers will respect and trust with her reporting skills and knowledge of the Roanoke-Chowan area,” Bryant concluded.

The 27-year-old is a graduate of Ridgecroft School where she was enrolled since kindergarten. She is a 2012 graduate of Elon University, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in English-Creative Writing with a minor in International Studies.

While at Elon, Taylor was on the Dean’s List every semester for four years. She earned the World Languages Award in 2011, and was a member of Sigma Tau Delta, an English Honor Society.

As part of her college education, Taylor studied abroad in Japan in January 2010. There she assisted struggling students in the Japanese language classes by reviewing materials and helped them devise different self-study methods to improve their memory retention skills.

Musically, Taylor plays piano as well as the clarinet. Of that latter instrument, Taylor said her skills were, “not really that good.” She added that she would love to learn how to play a banjo.

Taylor, who prides herself in being a “southpaw”, is gifted in more than one language. She speaks Japanese – saying it is more along the lines of “conversational but not fluent” – and Spanish, although she admits that is “very rusty.”

She likes to read short stories, with Edgar Allen Poe and Isaac Asimov, among others, being her favorite authors. She is also a music lover.

“I will listen to pretty much any kind of music, in any language,” she said.

She is the daughter of Dan and Judy Taylor. Her father is a farmer while her mom is the office manager at Dr. Thomas Vinson’s dentist office in Murfreesboro.

She has a younger brother, Kinchen Taylor, currently a business student at Chowan University.

As a “fun fact” about her life, Holly admits she has only travelled by plane twice, both times to Japan.