“I love creating that community and writing about that place, because I think, in some ways, Bois Sauvage is like the DeLisle of my past; it's like the DeLisle of the '80s that I can never return to. So in some ways, when I write about Bois Sauvage, I'm writing about a home that I've lost.”

American novelist and professor of English

Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She is known for her novels and for winning the National Book Award for Fiction twice. In 2011, she won the prize for Salvage the Bones, her second novel, which follows a family and their community as they face Hurricane Katrina. She won again in 2017 for Sing, Unburied, Sing. Her work is closely associated with family, community, and survival.