Eudora Welty Lecture: Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner. In 2017, she became the first woman and first person of color to win the National Book Award twice.

Her writing encompasses fiction, nonfiction, and memoir. Ward’s Salvage the Bones was the winner of the 2011 National Book Award and is a troubling but ultimately empowering tale of familial bonds set amid the chaos of the hurricane. Her memoir, Men We Reaped, deals with the loss of five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that follows people who live in poverty. In 2016, Ward edited the critically acclaimed anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, a New York Times bestseller. Her newest novel, the critically acclaimed Sing, Unburied, Sing won the 2017 National Book Award.