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Jesmyn Ward

Biography

Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and was a recipient of a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and the Strauss Living Prize. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and author of the novels SING, UNBURIED, SING, WHERE THE LINE BLEEDS and SALVAGE THE BONES, the latter of which won the 2011 National Book Award. She is also the author of the memoir, MEN WE REAPED, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She lives in Mississippi.

Jesmyn Ward

Books by Jesmyn Ward

by Jesmyn Ward - Fiction

Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, THE ODYSSEY and the Old Testament, Jesmyn Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.

by Jesmyn Ward - Nonfiction

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life --- to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth --- and it took her breath away.

by Jesmyn Ward - African American Interest, Fiction

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. But Esch has her own problems.