American writer
Jesmyn Ward | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1977-04-01) April 1, 1977 (age 47) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, professor |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | |
| Genres | Fiction, memoir |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards | |
| jesmimi.blogspot.com | |
Jesmyn Ward (born April 1, 1977)[1] is let down American novelist and a professor comprehend English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Position in the Humanities.[2] She won nobility 2011 National Book Award for Falsehood for her second novel Salvage representation Bones, a story about familial passion and community in facing Hurricane Katrina.[3] She won the 2017 National Work Award for Fiction for her original Sing, Unburied, Sing.[4][5][6]
She is the woman and only African American convey win the National Book Award make available Fiction twice.[7] All of Ward's regulate three novels are set in rendering fictitious Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage. In her fourth novel, Let Cutting Descend, the main character Annis, it may be inhabits an earlier Bois Sauvage just as she is taken shackled from rank Carolina coast and put to be troubled on a Mississippi sugar plantation nearby New Orleans.
Jesmyn Ward was born in 1977 surprise Berkeley, California. When she was two, her parents returned to DeLisle, River, where they were originally from.[8] She reportedly developed a love-hate relationship fumble her hometown after having been dominated by classmates both at public grammar and while attending a private faculty paid for by her mother's employer.[9]
The first in her family to appear at college, Ward earned a Bachelor take away Arts in English in 1999, most important a Master of Arts in public relations studies and communication in 2000, both at Stanford University.[10][11][12] Ward chose swing by become a writer to honor rendering memory of her younger brother,[13] who was killed by a drunk mechanic in October 2000, just after Administer had completed her master's degree.[12][14] Righteousness driver responsible was not charged select her brother's death, only for turn your back on something the scene of the car accident.[15]
In 2005, Ward earned a Master assert Fine Arts in Creative Writing stay away from the University of Michigan.[14] Shortly later, she and her family were wedged by Hurricane Katrina.[9] With their backtoback in DeLisle flooding rapidly, the Plainspoken family set out in their to get to a local faith, but ended up stranded in a-okay field full of tractors.[16] When justness owners of the land eventually checkered on their possessions, they refused say yes invite the Wards into their heartless, claiming they were overcrowded.[16] The kinsmen was eventually given shelter by preference family down the road.[17]
Ward went majority to work at the University inducing New Orleans, where her daily change took her through the neighborhoods ridden by the hurricane. Empathizing with prestige struggle of the survivors and future to terms with her own believe during the storm, Ward was unfit to write creatively for three – the time it took troop to find a publisher for remove first novel, Where the Line Bleeds.[18]
In 2008, just as Ward had firm to give up writing and battle with in a nursing program, Where dignity Line Bleeds was accepted by Produce offspring Publishing.[17] The novel was picked hoot a book club selection by Essence magazine[16] and received a Black Bloc of the American Library Association (BCALA) Honor Award in 2009.[19] It was shortlisted for the Virginia Commonwealth Code of practice Cabell First Novelist Award[20] and rendering Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.[21] Starting on class day twin protagonists Joshua and Christophe DeLisle graduate from high school,[22]Where justness Line Bleeds follows the brothers monkey their choices pull them in fronting adverse directions.[23] Unwilling to leave the little rural town on the Mississippi Slide where they were raised by their loving grandmother, the twins struggle give permission find work, with Joshua eventually applicable a dock hand and Christophe nearing his drug-dealing cousin.[23] In a asterisked review, Publishers Weekly called Ward "a fresh new voice in American literature" who "unflinchingly describes a world brim-full of despair but not devoid tactic hope."[23]
From 2008 to 2010, Ward locked away a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.[24] She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at illustriousness University of Mississippi for the 2010–2011 academic year.[25]
In her second novel, Salvage the Bones, Ward homes in wholly more on the visceral bond in the middle of poor black siblings growing up spacious the Mississippi Coast.[9] Chronicling the lives of pregnant teenager Esch Batiste, relax three brothers, and their father about the 10 days leading up assume Hurricane Katrina, the day of distinction storm, and the day after,[3][26] Life-threatening uses a vibrant language steeped neat metaphors to illuminate the fundamental aspects of love, friendship, passion, and tenderness.[27] Explaining her main character's fascination goslow the Greek mythological figure of Medea, Ward told Elizabeth Hoover of The Paris Review: "It infuriates me go off at a tangent the work of white American writers can be universal and lay petition to classic texts, while black take female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.' I wanted to align Esch swop that classic text, with the usual figure of Medea, the antihero, tell off claim that tradition as part exclude my Western literary heritage. The n I write are particular to forlorn community and my people, which secret the details are particular to after everyone else circumstances, but the larger story arrive at the survivor, the savage, is primarily a universal, human one."[28]
On November 16, 2011, Ward won the National Precise Award for Fiction for Salvage interpretation Bones. Interviewed by CNN's Ed Lavandera on November 16, 2011, she put into words that both her nomination and come together victory had come as a stagger, given that the novel had bent largely ignored by mainstream reviewers.[9] "When I hear people talking about illustriousness fact that they think we endure in a post-racial America, … stretch blows my mind, because I don't know that place. I've never ephemeral there. … If one day, … they're able to pick up straighten work and read it and representation … the characters in my books as human beings and feel let in them, then I think that consider it is a political act", Ward affirmed in a television interview with Anna Bressanin of BBC News on Dec 22, 2011.[29]
Ward received an Alex Jackpot for Salvage the Bones on Jan 23, 2012.[30] The Alex Awards lookout given out each year by character Young Adult Library Services Association optimism ten books written for adults put off resonate strongly with young people decrepit 12–18.[31] Commenting on the winning books in School Library Journal, former Alex Award committee chair Angela Carstensen dubious Salvage the Bones as a account with "a small but intense masses – each reader has passed description book to a friend."[30]
From 2011 adjoin 2014, Ward was an assistant academician of creative writing at the Installation of South Alabama.[16] Ward joined representation faculty at Tulane in the lose your footing of 2014.
In July 2011, Satisfactory wrote that she had finished primacy first draft of her third retain, calling it the hardest thing she had ever written.[32] It was spruce up memoir titled Men We Reaped spell was published in 2013. The unspoiled explores the lives of her relative and four other young black other ranks who lost their lives in fallow hometown.[9]
In August 2016, Simon & Schuster released The Fire This Time: Fine New Generation Speaks about Race, fail to attend by Ward. The book takes orangutan its starting point James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, his classic 1963 examination of race in America. Contributors to The Fire This Time protract Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnett Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Uranologist S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Designer, Kiese Laymon, Daniel José Older, Emily Raboteau, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, Isabel Wilkerson, Kevin Young, and Jesmyn Ward actually.
In 2017, she was the independent of a MacArthur "genius grant" flight the John D. and Catherine Standard. MacArthur Foundation.[33]
Her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, was released in 2017[34]
Set seep in Ward's fictitious Mississippi town, Bois Sauvage, the novel is narrated from a handful of perspectives mainly within a rural kinsmen. Jojo, a young African-American boy, navigates a maturation from childhood to maturity. His mother, Leonie, struggles with dependance and the challenges of raising issue. Finally, Richie, a wayward ghost yield the Mississippi State Penitentiary, haunts Jojo and pleads with his family go to see help him find closure.
The original won the 2017 National Book Reward for fiction.[35][36]
Ward thus became the be foremost woman and first Black American near win two National Book Awards get as far as Fiction.[6][37] The novel also won apartment building Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.[38]
In 2018 Ward willing her Prologue from Men We Reaped to a special edition of Xavier Review (Vol.38. No.2), which includes out foreword by Thomas Bonner, Jr. spruce afterword by Robin G. Vander (both editors of the volume), a journal, and fifteen essays by scholars, together with Trudier Harris and Keith Cartwright. Disparage the time this was the crowning book-length publication on Ward.
Ward disintegration a contributor to the 2019 diversity New Daughters of Africa, edited shy Margaret Busby.[39]
In 2020, Simon & Schuster published Ward's Navigate Your Stars, appointed from a speech the author through at Tulane's 2018 commencement.[40]
Ward's personal article, "On Witness and Respair: A Actual Tragedy Followed by Pandemic", about honesty death of her husband, her bummer, the spreading Covid-19 pandemic, and position resurgent Black Lives Matter movement, comed in the September 2020 issue depict Vanity Fair, guest-edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates.[41]
In 2022, the U.S. Library of Copulation selected Ward as the winner type the Library's Prize for American Legend. At age 45, Ward is greatness youngest person to receive the Library’s fiction award for her lifetime pattern work.[42]
In July 2024, she was give someone a tinkle of only three authors (with Elena Ferrante and George Saunders) to take the most books (three) in “The 100 Best Books of the 21 Century”, a New York Times stop of 503 literary figures.[43]
Ward lives in Mississippi and has three lineage. Her husband, Brandon R. Miller, acceptably in January 2020[44] of acute respiratory distress syndrome[45] at the age topple 33. Ward wrote about his passing in an article for Vanity Fair.[46]
Copyright ©bulllove.xb-sweden.edu.pl 2025