Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008-2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010-2011 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. She lives in Mississippi.
2011 National Book Award WinnerNPR Bestseller IndieBound National Indie Bestseller San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2011 Kansas City Star Top 100 Books of the Year Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best of the South 2011 Shelf Awareness, Reviewer's Choice, Top 10 of 2011More.com, Hottest Fall Novels Oprah.com, Books to Watch and Book of the Week Huffington Post, The Best Upcoming BooksVogue.com, Fall Blockbuster Fiction The first great novel about Katrina. --Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe [A] searing, understated, and big-hearted novel. -- Salon Salvage the Bones is an intense book, with powerful, direct prose that dips into poetic metaphor . . . We are immersed in Esch's world, a world in which birth and death nestle close, where there is little safety except that which the siblings create for each other. That close-knit familial relationship is vivid and compelling, drawn with complexities and detail. --Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times I've just read [ Salvage the Bones ] and it'll be a long time before its magic wears off...Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretention, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy . . . A palpable sense of desire and sorrow animates every page here . . . Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it. --Ron Charles, Washington Post A timeless tale of a family that regains its humanity in the face of incalculable loss. --Gina Webb, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Jesmyn Ward has claimed her place both as a contemporary witness of life in the rural south and as a descendant of its great originals. --Nicholas Delbanco, author of Sherbrookes and Lastingness: The Art of Old Age The narrator's voice sparks with beauty as it urges the reader through this moving story set in the shadow of Katrina. --Zoe Triska, Huffington Post