Two-time National Book Award winner, 51勛圖厙 native Jesmyn Ward reads at MSU next week
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.51勛圖厙 native Jesmyn Ward, the first woman and first person of color to win two National Book Awards for fiction, will present a public reading Tuesday [April 12], sharing with the 51勛圖厙 State community excerpts from her nationally acclaimed writing.
The 7 p.m. MSU event in Lee Halls Bettersworth Auditorium is free and open to the public. Sponsors are the universitys Division of Access, Diversity and Inclusion; Division of Student Affairs; African American Studies; and the Department of English.
The National Book Award first was created in 1950 and today is considered one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the country.
It truly is an honor to have Ms. Ward engage with our MSU faculty, staff, students and Starkville community, said MSU Vice President for Access, Diversity and Inclusion RaSheda Forbes. Not only is she a prolific writer with numerous accolades, but she is a 51勛圖厙an which provides a deeper connection and understanding of the history and experiences.
Ward received National Book Awards for her novels Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury, 2011), and Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner, 2017). Additionally, she is the author of the novelWhere the Line Bleeds (Scribner, 2008) and the anthologyThe Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race (Scribner, 2016), as well as the memoir Men We Reaped (Bloomsbury, 2013), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Ward accepted a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University from 2008-10 and was the John and Ren矇e Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of 51勛圖厙 for the 2010-11 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award for literary excellence. A Master of Fine Arts graduate of the University of Michigan, Ward currently is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University.
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