A Tulane University professor has become the youngest person ever to receive the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. At the age of 45, Jesmyn Ward has been selected for the 2022 class of the prestigious award in celebration of her mastery of work focusing on social injustice and racism.
Her contributions to the fiction space include her award-winning literary works Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which both garnered National Book Awards, and the memoir Men We Reaped, a work that was selected to be the finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ward is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time.
Currently a professor of creative writing, Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award.
“I am deeply honored to receive this award, not only because it aligns my work with legendary company, but because it also recognizes the difficulty and rigor of meeting America on the page, of appraising her as a lover would: clear-eyed, open-hearted, keen to empathize and connect,” Ward said in a statement. “This is our calling, and I am grateful for it.”
The award ceremony will take place on Sept. 3 at the 2022 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.
