How many National Book Awards has Jesmyn Ward won?

Two, for Salvage the Bones in 2011 and Sing, Unburied, Sing in 2017, the first woman to win the fiction award twice.

Where are Jesmyn Ward's books set?

Mostly in and around DeLisle, Mississippi, the Gulf Coast town where she grew up.

What is Men We Reaped?

Her memoir about five young men from her hometown, including her brother, who died young.

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Jesmyn Ward

Novelist, two-time National Book Award winner · b. 1977

JW

BORN: 1977
ERA: 2008 to Present
KNOWN FOR: Novelist, two-time National Book Award winner

§ THE SHORT VERSION

Jesmyn Ward, born in 1977 and raised in DeLisle, Mississippi, is a novelist who won the National Book Award for Fiction for Salvage the Bones in 2011 and Sing, Unburied, Sing in 2017. She was the first woman to win the fiction award twice.

Born in Berkeley, California, in 1977 and raised in DeLisle, Mississippi, the small Gulf Coast town most of her books return to.

TWICE

Highlights.

01

National Book Award for Fiction, Salvage the Bones (2011)

02

National Book Award for Fiction, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)

03

First woman to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice

04

MacArthur Fellow (2017)

The portraits.

EVERY ARTIST →

§ QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

How many National Book Awards has Jesmyn Ward won?: Two, for Salvage the Bones in 2011 and Sing, Unburied, Sing in 2017, the first woman to win the fiction award twice.
Where are Jesmyn Ward's books set?: Mostly in and around DeLisle, Mississippi, the Gulf Coast town where she grew up.
What is Men We Reaped?: Her memoir about five young men from her hometown, including her brother, who died young.

Salvage the Bones, a novel set in the days around Hurricane Katrina, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2011. Sing, Unburied, Sing won it again in 2017, and she became the first woman to win the fiction award twice.

THE PLACE IS THE BOOK

Her memoir Men We Reaped counts the young men she lost in her hometown. She writes one small Black community in Mississippi so precisely that it becomes everyone's, the same way Kendrick made a few blocks of Compton universal.

The only name in this room so far.