Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones

Fellow: Awarded 2021
Field of Study: Fiction

Competition: US & Canada

Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage. Published in 2018, An American Marriage was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Aspen Words Prize and an NAACP Image Award. It has been published in two dozen countries.

Jones has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. She is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.

With her debut Leaving Atlanta (2002), Jones established the qualities of her fiction that would become her calling card—the city of Atlanta as setting, the intersection of social justice and domesticity as theme, and alternating points of view as structure. More information about her publications and engagements can be found on her website.

Photo Credit: Nina Subin

Scroll to Top