“I'm still a bit of a reading glutton, I think, because I browse, read a bit of the back copy, flip through the book, read a bit of the text, and if it still seems fascinating, I read it. That's why my bedside table is so cluttered: I want to imbibe it all.”

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.