Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward, born in 1977, grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She studied literature in Michigan, held a fellowship at Stanford, and was a writer in residence at the University of Mississippi. Ward is a writer and literary scholar. She received the National Book Award for her novels “Salvage the Bones” (2013) and “Sing, Unburied, Sing” (2018), becoming the first woman and first African American to win the award twice. She has also received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant.