Jesmyn Ward will join Dean Nelson in February 2025 to kick off the 30th Anniversary Writer鈥檚 Symposium by the Sea, Writing That Redeems.
Jesmyn Ward has been hailed as the standout writer of her generation, proving her 鈥渇earless and toughly lyrical鈥� voice in novels, memoir, and nonfiction. Betsy Burton of the American Booksellers Association has called her 鈥渢he new Toni Morrison.鈥� Ward is a MacArthur 鈥淕enius Grant鈥� recipient, and in 2017 she became the first woman and the first person of color to win two National Book Awards for Fiction鈥攋oining the ranks of William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and John Updike.
Ward is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her newest book is Let Us Descend, which made Oprah鈥檚 Book Club List and received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in fiction.
"Jesmyn Ward鈥檚 literary vision continues to become more expansive and piercing, addressing urgent questions about racism and social injustice being voiced by Americans." 鈥擫ibrary of Congress Prize for American Fiction
Ward is currently a professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she won five Hopwood Awards for her fiction, essays, and drama. She held a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and served as the Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. A contributing editor for Vanity Fair, she is at work on two additional new books: a novel for adults set in New Orleans at the height of the American slave trade and a young adult novel about a Black girl from the South with supernatural powers.
Included in the ticket is live music from Bobby Cressy to begin at 6:15, when doors open for general admission seating. Come early to get good parking, get a great seat, listen to music, and check out the special 30th Anniversary surprises we have in store!
The 30th Anniversary Writer's Symposium by the Sea will be February 24-28, 2025, also featuring award-winning writers Sandra Cisneros and Mitch Albom. For tickets and more info, visit pointloma.edu/2025writers.