There's so much I love about home, but then there's a lot that I can acknowledge that I dislike about home. And… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I hope people who read my books feel empathy for us and really see us as complicated people. — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I'm not saying I have to write a book that's ten times better than my counterparts, but I do think that I… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones'… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“By the time we'd moved into that rambling, lopsided wooden house, I'd already fallen in love with reading. I think my love… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I read everything. When I say everything, I read everything: children's literature, Y.A., science fiction, fantasy, romance - I read it all.… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I'm still a bit of a reading glutton, I think, because I browse, read a bit of the back copy, flip through… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I hope that if the people who read my work encounter people in the real world who are like the characters that… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
Faulkner is a really important figure in southern literature. I wrestle with him and his legacy every time I sit down and… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
'The UnAmericans' is a compassionate and brilliantly rendered debut - and for a book set largely in the past, these stories feel… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
When I read 'Absalom, Absalom!,' I remember being really excited about it and telling all my friends they had to read it,… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
One of the ways my first novel failed was that I was too in love with my characters. — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
As a reader, sometimes, I just want to not think. You know, I want to read something that is purely enjoyable: that… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I've found that in fiction - and this is just the kind of writer I am - I can't really work from… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I was pleasantly surprised with 'Salvage.' I went to Australia and New Zealand for the novel and met a lot of people… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch,… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think that the first book that made me think that I could try to be a writer - or that made… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
Physical books are still my favorite, but I own an e-book reader. They're convenient for travel. — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against that and… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
There's so much I love about home, but then there's a lot that I can acknowledge that I dislike about home. And acknowledging that… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“The dream of her was the glow of a spent fire on a cold night: warm and welcoming.” — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
The first writer that I think of immediately that I studied with at Michigan is Peter Ho Davies. He was really important to me,… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta,… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“Vines catch my arms, my head; we tear through until we break out into the clearing before the fence, the field, the barn, the… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
“Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee.” — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
People give the South a bad rap. It's often stereotyped as backwards and close-minded and dogmatic, and all of those things have been true.… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
When I was a teenager, I was the only black girl at a small, private Episcopal school, where my tuition was paid by the… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies,… — Jesmyn Ward Copy Share Image
