Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward was born in DeLisle, a rural community in the gulf of Mississippi. A first generation college student, she studied English at Stanford University, graduating in 1999. She also gained an MA in Media Studies from Stanford. In 2000, Ward’s younger brother was killed by a drunk driver. In her 2013 memoir Men We Reaped, Ward reflects on the lives of her younger brother and four other black men from her hometown who died young. In 2005 Ward graduated from the University of Michigan with an MFA in Creative Writing. Shortly after, Ward’s family home in DeLisle flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina, an event that had a profound impact on her writing. Ward has worked at the University of New Orleans, the University of South Alabama, Stanford, and the University of Mississippi, and is currently an associate professor of English at Tulane. She has published five books, including a collection she edited called The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, which was published in 2016. Ward is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and has won the National Book Award for Fiction twice: first for Salvage the Bones in 2011, and again for Sing, Unburied, Sing in 2017.