News correspondents called their stories in from cities across the world. Listening to the recordings were the transcriptionists, data-entry clerks who took words and made type, readying the result for print.

It’s a dying occupation —  Internet access and email are global — but it’s the foundation of Amy Rowland’s first novel, “The Transcriptionist,” released last week by Algonquin Books in Chapel Hill. Rowland is a Washington native and a 1987 Washington High School graduate.

According to reviewers for the Boston Globe and the Buffalo News, Rowland’s novel is one of discovery, following the emergence of the protagonist from the isolated life of a transcriptionist into real, and surreal, life.

They also call it “funny, sad, perceptive and soulful;” the New York City and story Rowland creates in it “a memorable experience.”

As an editor of the New York Times Book Review, Rowland is very familiar with book reviews, but this is the first time she’s been on the other side of the page.

“It’s interesting. It’s such a strange experience,” Rowland said. “I’ve been very fortunate so far. So far, they’ve been very positive — it’s been a gentle introduction. I suspect it will become more painful as more reviews come in. In some ways, I think I might be more critical, but I realize that an individual author is reviewing your work, so they’re bringing in their own background and feelings and proclivities.”

Like Rowland, her protagonist, Lena, is a Southerner. Lena is also the rare transcriptionist, as was Rowland when she began working at the New York Times in 2001. Yet another trait author and character share is a love of language.

For Lena, that love stems from a rural Southern upbringing and a minister father. For Rowland, it’s about the stories that ebbed and flowed through everyday life growing up in the South.

“My fascination with language started with Southern storytelling. In that way, it had a profound effect on the book and just me, as a writer. Also having James Farrell as an English teacher at Washington High School didn’t hurt,” she laughed, adding that her aunt, Ruth Rowland, was also her English teacher at WHS when she was a junior.

“So, they taught me well.”

Well enough that she received a master’s degree in writing from Sarah Lawrence, knowing her next step would be to write a novel. However, the novel she wrote was not the one she’d planned on.

“I was actually writing another novel, a Southern novel,” Rowland said. “At some point, I realized that the novel I was working on, it wasn’t working out. … It never occurred to me that I would write a novel about the end of the transcription room.”

Rowland said she will return to her Southern roots — in prose form — in the future, but for now she’s enjoying the result of years of work.

“It’s very nice to be on this side,” Rowland said. “You know, you sit in a room by yourself, writing a novel and it gets published — and then you get to talk about it.”