A Masters of Craft Talk with Jesmyn Ward

ABOUT THE CRAFT TALK

MacArthur Genius Jesmyn Ward is described as the standout writer of her generation. The first woman, the first Black person, and the first person of color to win two National Book Awards for Fiction—joining the ranks of Faulkner, Bellow, Cheever, Roth, and Updike—Ward’s novels Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011) build deep empathy for the human condition, especially for Black folk. Her memoir, Men We Reaped, delves into the five years of Ward’s life in which she lost five young men—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that follows poverty-born Black people. Men We Reaped won the Heartland Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ward’s stories are largely set on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, where she grew up and still lives. Join Roots. Wounds. Words. (RWW) for this Masters of Craft Talk where award-winning author Jesmyn Ward discusses literary craft tools and techniques while in conversation with Nicole Shawan Junior.

Date & Time: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2021 | 7:00 PM ET

Duration: 1 hour

Tuition: $35.00

Capacity: Limited. Seats are filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Venue: Online. Link to the Craft Talk will be emailed in the afternoon leading up to it.

ABOUT THE MASTER STORYTELLER:

Jesmyn Ward (she/her) is a fiction writer exploring the bonds of community and familial love among poor African Americans in the rural South. She is the author of three novels and a memoir, all set in the Gulf Coast region of her native Mississippi and centered on marginalized black communities. In prose that is simultaneously luminous and achingly honest, Ward captures moments of beauty, tenderness, and resilience against a bleak landscape of crushing poverty, racism, addiction, and incarceration. Jesmyn Ward received a B.A. (1999) and M.A. (2000) from Stanford University and an M.F.A. (2005) from the University of Michigan. Currently an associate professor in the Department of English at Tulane University.

Partial and full scholarships available. To inquire, email Info@RootsWoundsWords.org. Explicitly state which scholarship (partial or full) you’re interested in.

Closed captioning is provided. Like all RWW offerings, this space is for Black, Indigenous, Latinx/e, Asian, and other Storytellers of Color only. BIPOC Storytellers are centered here, exclusively.

This program was funded in part by Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This program is in partnership with the Free Black Women's Library, a social art project, interactive installation and book collection that celebrates the brilliance, diversity and imagination of Black women writers. The library features four thousand books written by Black women, as well as workshops, readings, story circles, performances, cultural conversations and a monthly reading club.