Jesmyn Ward is the author of two novels, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury, 2011), which won the National Book Award for fiction, and Where the Line Bleeds (Bolden / Agate, 2008), which won a 2009 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Award, and was a finalist for the 2009 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and for the 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Where the Line Bleeds has been excerpted in BOMB magazine’s literary pull–out First Proof and Best African American Fiction 2010 (One World / Ballantine Books). Ward’s short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space and Oxford American. She received a BA in English and an MA in communication from Stanford University, and an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. She has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of New Orleans, and Stanford University, where she was a 2008–2010 Stegner Fellow. She was the 2010–2011 John and Renée Grisham Writer–in–Residence at the University of Mississippi. She is an assistant professor in creative writing at the University of South Alabama.  

Photo by Tony Cook