This year Jesmyn Ward won the fiction award for her book, “Salvage the Bones.” It is just the second book from the thirty-four year old writer. Her first, “Where the Line Bleeds,” came out in two thousand eight.
“Salvage the Bones” tells about twelve days in the life of a family as Hurricane Katrina hits their Mississippi town. The father of four is a single parent who drinks too much alcohol. The children worry about having too little food. And the only sister, fifteen year old Esch, is pregnant.
Jesmyn Ward told the crowd at the ceremony that she wanted to write about the poor and black and rural people of the South. She herself is from Mississippi. She also said it was the death of her brother that moved her to start writing. She said the experience taught her that life is weak and unpredictable.
JESMYN WARD: “I wanted to do something with my time here that would have meaning. My first stories were attempts to honor my brother. To write the kind of life that he might have lived. As I wrote more my focus widened.”
Jesmyn Ward said her writing is a life’s work, and that she is just at the beginning.
Poet Nikky Finney won a National Book Award for her book, “Head Off and Split.” The non-fiction award went to writer Stephen Greenblatt for “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.” And Thanhha Lai won the award for Young People’s Literature. Her book is called “Inside Out and Back Again.”
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25