“I was a freshman at Stanford University the first time someone called me a 'bama.' One of my new friends from D.C. said it, laughing, and even though I didn't know what it meant, exactly, I got that it was some kind of insult. I must have smirked or shrugged, which made him laugh harder, and then he called me 'country,' too.”

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.