Ward, Jesmyn (1977-…), is an African American author. She has set several of her novels among Black residents of the fictional Gulf Coast town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, in the Southern United States. Bois Sauvage resembles the town in which she grew up, DeLisle, Mississippi. Ward’s fiction is strongly influenced by her experiences growing up in the rural South and by the impact of Hurricane Katrina, a destructive storm that devastated the United States Gulf Coast area in 2005. The hurricane is either a central event in her novels or provides background atmosphere. Critics have praised Ward’s vibrant, lyrical writing style, enriched with symbolic references to the Bible and Greek mythology.
Ward’s first novel, Where the Line Bleeds (2008), tracks twin brothers growing up in Bois Sauvage as their lives go in different directions. Her second novel, Salvage the Bones (2011), follows a pregnant Black teenager and her family over 12 days as Hurricane Katrina hits Bois Sauvage. The novel won the 2011 National Book Award for fiction. Ward won the 2017 National Book Award for fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). The novel explores tensions among a Black woman and her two children as they make a difficult automobile trip to pick up their white father, who is being released from prison. Let Us Descend (2023) is Ward’s first novel that takes place away from Mississippi, as well as her first historical novel. It tells of an enslaved Black woman in North Carolina before the American Civil War (1861-1865). The woman learns that her enslaver is also her father, but also learns strength and resilience from her mother and from a mysterious guardian spirit.
Ward wrote Men We Reaped (2013), a memoir about five young Black men with whom she grew up—including her brother—who died over a four-year period. She edited The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (2016), a collection of essays and poems about race in the United States. The commencement address that Ward gave at Tulane University in 2018 was published as Navigate Your Stars (2020).
Ward was born on April 1, 1977, in Oakland, California. She grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi, near the Gulf of Mexico. She attended Stanford University, earning a B.A. degree in English in 1999 and an M.A. degree in media studies and communications in 2000. Ward received an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2005. She taught creative writing at the University of South Alabama from 2011 to 2014, when she joined the English department at Tulane University.
