Conversations with Jesmyn Ward
Conversations with Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward (b. 1977) is arguably one of today’s most important authors. Although often compared to William Faulkner, Ward and her writings have done anything but live in that shadow since the 2008 debut of her first novel Where the Line Bleeds. She has produced four novels and a memoir that are equally harrowing and heartening, and she is the recipient of numerous major literary awards and fellowships, including two National Book Awards, for Salvage theBones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017).
Spanning from 2009 to the present, the interviews collected in ConversationswithJesmynWard display a master artist with a poetic command for words. Ward’s personality and writing style could be characterized as gentle, passionate, fastidious, queer, and brutally honest, as her soft-spoken voice and lyrical prose express a passion for the world so large and consuming that it often emanates as rage or sadness but always leaves readers with a bit of hope. She speaks at length about grief, her writing process, and a love-hate relationship with her home state of Mississippi and the South, as well as the influence that her family, hip-hop music and culture, and vigorous childhood reading have on her writing.
Kemeshia Randle Swanson, a college professor, is currently serving a joint appointment in the Departments of English and African American Studies at Mississippi State University. She previously dedicated ten years of service to the Department of English at Garner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. Her work focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American literature, southern literature, gender and sexualities studies, and hip-hop and popular culture. She has published in edited collections such as Words, Beats, and Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture; Like One of the Family: Domestic Workers, Race, and In/Visibility in “The Help”; and Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape. She is author of Maverick Feminist: To Be Female and Black in a Country Founded upon Violence and Respectability, published by University Press of Mississippi.
Introduction
Chronology
Getting the South Right: An Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Nico Berry / 2009
Jesmyn Ward on Salvage the Bones
Elizabeth Hoover / 2011
In Salvage the Bones, Family’s Story of Survival
Michel Martin / 2011
Jesmyn Ward by Rebecca Keith
Rebecca Keith / 2012
New Memoir Recounts Black Lives “Reaped” Too Young
Rachel Martin / 2013
Jesmyn Ward: Men We Reaped
Tobias Carroll / 2013
The Rumpus Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Kima Jones / 2013
An Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Roxane Gay / 2013
Jesmyn Ward on How Books Can Make Us Better People
Kiese Laymon / 2014
Bookforum Talks with Jesmyn Ward
Kyla Marshell / 2016
Literary Voice of the Dirty South: An Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Danille K. Taylor / 2016
Haunted by Ghosts: The Millions Interviews Jesmyn Ward
Adam Vitcavage / 2017
Powell’s Interview: Jesmyn Ward, Author of Sing, Unburied, Sing
Rhianna Walton / 2017
Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Jennifer Baker / 2017
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Conversation with Jesmyn Ward
Natalie Y. Moore / 2017
Ghosts of Our Past: An Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Louise McCune / 2017
Ghosts of History: An Interview with Jesmyn Ward
Louis Elliot / 2017
Jesmyn Ward: “So Much of Life Is Pain and Sorrow and Willful Ignorance”
Vanessa Thorpe / 2017
For Jesmyn Ward, Writing Means Telling the “Truth About the Place That I Live In”
Sam Briger / 2017
The Carnegie Shortlist Interviews: Jesmyn Ward
Annie Bostrom / 2017
Jesmyn Ward
Alma Mathijsen / 2018
Jesmyn Ward on Writing Honest Novels with Good Titles, Inhabiting Ghosts, and Learning to Love Faulkner
Jennifer Acker / 2020
Two-Time National Book Award–Winning Author Jesmyn Ward on Her Novel Let Us Descend
Ayesha Rascoe / 2023
Poured Over: Jesmyn Ward on Let Us Descend
Miwa Messer / 2023
Something Beautiful Out of the Darkness
Regina N. Bradley / 2023
“Writing is Restorative”: A Conversation with Jesmyn Ward
Kemeshia Randle Swanson / 2024
Additional Resources
Index
