Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for "Sing, Unburied, Sing" (2017) and "Salvage the Bones" (2011). She is also the author of the novel "Where the Line Bleeds" and 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. Jesmyn was born in California but moved to Mississippi at age three, where she grew up and now lives, drawing on her experiences to write about loss and inequality. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University.
