Photo: Jesmimi / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Jesmyn Ward is, in my view, one of the essential American voices of this century. Two National Book Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Time 100 nod, a Stanford education, a Tulane professorship: the credentials are unimpeachable. But what moves me is the work itself. Salvage the Bones turned Hurricane Katrina into an intimate study of familial love, and Sing, Unburied, Sing reckons with the unburied past of the American South. She gives language to lives and losses that history tends to overlook. Her books are heavy to read precisely because they refuse to look away, and that refusal is her greatness.
Overview
Jesmyn Ward (born April 1, 1977) is an American novelist and a professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her second novel Salvage the Bones, a story about familial love and community in facing Hurricane Katrina.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Jesmyn Ward
- Name (Japanese)
- ジェスミン・ウォード
- Reading
- じぇすみん・うぉーど
- Born
- January 1, 1977 (age 49)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Capricorn / Snake
- Origin
- Mississippi, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- novelist / writer / autobiographer / university teacher / docent
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Stanford University
Awards & achievements
- 2011 National Book Award
- 2012 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
- 2017 MacArthur Fellows Program
- 2018 Time 100
- 2017 National Book Award
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | Sing, Unburied, Sing | — | |
| Notable work | Salvage the Bones | — | |
| Notable work | Men We Reaped | — |
6. Links
Novelist — see all → · Writer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.