Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award recipient and the youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, will present the 2025 Flora Plonsky Levy Lecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Ward's literary work reflects the culture of the rural Mississippi Gulf Coast, where she grew up and still resides. Her acclaimed 2011 novel, "Salvage the Bones," draws from her experience evacuating her flooded home during Hurricane Katrina. Now 20 years later, her fictional narrative transcends the tragedies wrought by the storm.
UL Lafayette will host Ward at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 24, in the Angelle Hall auditorium on campus. The free event will open to the public at 6:30 p.m. and books will be on sale in the lobby, courtesy of Cavalier House Books.
The author will read from her 2023 historical novel, "Let Us Descend," an Oprah's Book Club pick and instant New York Times best seller. The story follows an enslaved woman from the Carolinas to a Louisiana sugar plantation. Oprah Winfrey called the novel, "a vital work for our culture."
Dr. David Squires, an associate professor of English and director of Graduate Studies for Continuing Students, said the lecture committee was especially interested in bringing another outstanding regional author to the stage after hosting Mississippi native Kiese Laymon last year.
"We started thinking about Gulf Coast writers and how they represent the region and what that means for us all," said Squires.
Ward, a Vanity Fair contributing editor and creative writing professor at Tulane University, received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2017 for "exploring the enduring bonds of community and familial love among poor African Americans of the rural South against a landscape of circumscribed possibilities and lost potential." Her 2018 Tulane commencement speech was adapted into a book, "Navigating Your Stars." That same year, Time magazine named her to its list of 100 Most Influential People.
In 2024, The New York Times included three of her books; "Men We Reaped," "Salvage the Bones," and "Sing, Unburied, Sing" among the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
The annual Flora Plonsky Levy Lecture Series is hosted by the University's Department of English through a UL Lafayette Foundation endowment.
For more information, contact english@louisiana.edu.
Photo caption: Jesmyn Ward, the National Book Award-winning author of Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing will be the speaker for UL Lafayette’s 2025 Flora Plonsky Levy Lecture. Doors for the free event will open at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 24, in Angelle Hall auditorium. It is open to the public. Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan