Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward is an acclaimed American novelist and professor of creative writing at Tulane University, known for her fiction exploring poverty, racism, and community among poor African Americans in rural Mississippi. She is the first woman and first person of color to win two National Book Awards for Fiction, receiving the honor in 2011 for 'Salvage the Bones' and in 2017 for 'Sing, Unburied, Sing'.