Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward is a well-known American author and is mainly known as the recipient of National Book Award for Fiction, 2011. She was raised up in DeLisle, a small village in Mississippi. Ward shares a love and hate relationship with her native place after she was bullied in a public school by her black class fellow mates. So soon she shifted schools and continued her studies at a private school, expenses of which were borne by her mother's employer. Ward again faced bullying at her new school by her white classmates.

Ward had a younger brother who was killed by an intoxicated driver in the same year she completed her college. It was after this incident that she decided to become an author to honour the memory of her dead brother. She finished her degree of Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing in the year 2005 from the Michigan University. She was also awarded a two-year Stegner fellowship at the Stanford University in the year 2008. Ward and her family was affected by the infamous Hurricane-Katrina and she revealed that they managed to survive by taking shelter at her grandmother’s house as her mother lived in a double-wide trailer which is not a good option in hurricanes. Ward later went on to work at the New Orleans University. Shaken by the hardships and aftermath of the survivors post the natural disaster and also by her personal experience, inspired her to write her very first book, “Where the Line Bleeds." The author had a hard time finding a publisher for her book. It took her 3 years to find her first publisher. She was about to give up her writing career and was to join a nursing program when Agate Publishing accepted her book, “Where the Lines Bleed”. The book was awarded Black Caucus by the American Library Association (BCALA) Honour Award in the year 2009.

In the year 2010, she worked at the University of Mississippi as a Grisham-Writer in Residence. In the following year, Ward published her second book "Salvage Bones" which focussed on a middle-class black family and its problems at the time leading to Hurricane-Katrina, a day before and the day after. On the 16th of November, 2011, the book went on to win the National Book Award in the fiction and also the Alex Award on January 23, 2012. Her third book, "Men We Reaped" was published in the year 2013 which paid tribute to her brother and four other black fellows who lost their lives over the years. Her next novel is expected to hit the shelves in the year 2017 and is titled "Sing, Unburied, Sing" which will be published by Simon & Schuster