An American Marriage has been selected for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction Longlist. A six-title shortlist (three fiction titles, three nonfiction titles,) will be announced on October 24, 2018. The two winners (fiction, nonfiction) will be announced in Seattle on Sunday, January 27, 2019.
To read the list in its entirety, click here.
Tayari Jones joins The New York Times‘ Lauretta Charlton for a conversation on Black Sisterhood, Anita Hill, and Christine Blasey Ford in the wake of the Kavanaugh Hearings. On Black Feminism, Ms. Jones remarks: “Black women’s feminist contributions are very often erased. But at the same time, I am reminded that the influence of black women — black sisterhood — is everywhere.”
To read the article in full, click here.
Tayari Jones is honored to have delivered remarks at the 2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards–the only national literary foundation dedicated to awarding exclusively female writers with outstanding contributions to fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
In her remarks to this year’s recipients, Ms. Jones writes, “Alice Walker famously urged us to ‘be no one’s darling.’ I would like to expand on this and push you to be no one’s darling, not even your own.”
To read Tayari Jones’s speech in full, click here.
An American Marriage has been selected for the 2018 National Book Award Longlist for Fiction,. The longlist will be whittled down to a shortlist of five books, which will be announced Oct. 10. The winner will be revealed at a ceremony in New York on Nov. 14.
For the complete 2018 National Book Awards Longlist for Fiction, click here.
Literacy Partners provides excerpts of over two hundred books, poems, and short stories to New Yorkers on and off the subway. For an excerpt of An American Marriage, click here.
An American Marriage has been chosen for President Barack Obama’s 2018 Summer Reading List. In a Facebook post, the President wrote: “One of my favorite parts of summer is deciding what to read when things slow down just a bit, whether it’s on a vacation with family or just a quiet afternoon. This summer I’ve been absorbed by new novels, revisited an old classic, and reaffirmed my faith in our ability to move forward together when we seek the truth….An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is a moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.”
Tayari Jones is honored to have An American Marriage on President Obama’s 2018 Summer Reading List– see President Obama’s complete list of summer reading recommendations here.
Tayari Jones will join Emory University’s renowned Creative Writing Program this fall as a member of the English faculty in Emory College of Arts and Sciences. She will be on sabbatical for the fall semester, but will begin teaching in January 2019.
“An American Marriage Came Together After A Trip To The Mall”
Find the full transcript here.
Oprah Winfrey chooses An American Marriage for 2018 Oprah’s Book Club.
Five authors comprise the 2018 class of Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductees: Michael Bishop, Tayari Jones and Cynthia Shearer will be admitted at the November ceremony; Furman Bisher and Frances Newman will be honored posthumously.Tayari Jones has assumed exciting new roles in two arts organizations.
Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) seeks to educate the imagination by offering innovative creative writing programs for students and teachers, and by providing a variety of publications and resources to support learning through the literary arts. T&W programs include writing workshops for students, professional development for educators, managing the New York Poetry Out Loud competition, and publishing Teachers & Writers Magazine and other resources about the teaching of creative writing.
The Center for Southern Literary Arts cultivates the rich and diverse stories of the Memphis region and encourages and supports innovations in the literary arts. Through community programs, education initiatives, artist residencies, and creative economic development, the CSLA expands beyond the traditional boundaries of the literary arts to capture and reclaim stories as a pathway to repair, equity, and justice in the city, the South, and the nation.
The Diana L. Bennett Fellows Program at UNLV’s Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute (BMI) awards Tayari Jones a fellowship for the academic year 2017-18. She will be in residence in Las Vegas to accept this opportunity and begin work on her fifth novel. Each year, BMI offers the Bennett Fellowship to three critically acclaimed writers who, for one or two semesters, contribute to the cultural landscape of UNLV and the larger Las Vegas community. Jones is the 2017-18 Shearing Fellow. More.
The cover of Tayari Jones’s new novel, An American Marriage, is revealed today on Entertainment Weekly. Read an excerpt.