“It’s among Tayari’s many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words.”
— OPRAH WINFREY

“Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear. That has been true from her very first book, but with An American Marriage that vision, that strength and that truth-telling voice have found a new level of artistry and power.”
—MICHAEL CHABON, author of Moonglow: A Novel

“I love An American Marriage and I’m so excited for this book to be in the world. Tayari’s novel is timely, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Reading it, I found myself angry as hell, laughing out loud, choking up and cheering. A gem of a book.”
—JACQUELINE WOODSON, author of Brown Girl Dreaming

“Tayari Jones is a great storyteller. An American Marriage holds the reader from first page to last, with her compassionate observation, her clear-eyed insight and her beautifully written and complex characters. Jones understands love and loss and writes with passion and precision about the forces that move us all from one to another.”
—AMY BLOOM, bestselling author of Lucky Us

“An American Marriage asks hard questions about injustice and betrayal, and answers them with a heartbreaking and genuinely suspenseful love story in which nobody’s wrong and everybody’s wounded. Tayari Jones has written a complex and important novel about people trapped in a tragic situation, struggling to reconcile their responsibilities and desires.”
—TOM PERROTTA, author of The Leftovers

“Tayari Jones’ American Marriage is a stunning epic love story filled with breathtaking twists and turns, while bursting with realized and unrealized dreams. Skillfully crafted and beautifully written, American Marriage is an exquisite, timely, and powerful novel that feels both urgent and indispensable.”
—EDWIDGE DANTICAT, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory

  • Tayari Jones Delivers Remarks at 2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards

    2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards Winners with guest speaker Tayari Jones at September 13th ceremony in New York City. (Front, L-R: Lisa Chen and Alison C. Rollins. Back, L-R: Lydia Conklin, Karen Outen, Tayari Jones, Gabriela Garcia, Chelsea Bieker. Photo by Star Black.)

    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 selected for 2018 National Book Award Longlist

    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 Excerpts An American Marriage for #SubwayReads

     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 Chosen for President Barack Obama’s 2018 Summer Reading List

    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.

  • Sunny Hostin selects An American Marriage as The View’s Get Lit Pick

    http://www.facebook.com/TheView/videos/10155605130031524/

  • Tayari Jones Joins the Faculty of Emory University

    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.

  • Tayari Jones Appears on Late Night With Seth Meyers

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6twWBvZVnQ

  • Tayari Jones on NPR’s Code Switch with Karen Grigsby Bates

    “An American Marriage Came Together After A Trip To The Mall”

    Find the full transcript here.

  • An American Marriage Chosen For Oprah’s Book Club

    Oprah Winfrey chooses An American Marriage for 2018 Oprah’s Book Club.

     

  • Jones Elected to Georgia Authors Hall of Fame

    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.
    The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame was established in 2000 as part of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library to honor Georgia writers and to introduce the public to the library’s rich collections for research into Georgia literature and cultural history.

  • Tayari Jones Elected To The Boards of Directors of Two Arts Organizations

    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.

  • Tayari Jones Named Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow

    bmiLogoThe 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.

  • AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE: EW Cover Reveal

    The cover of Tayari Jones’s new novel, An American Marriage, is revealed today on Entertainment Weekly.  Read an excerpt.

  • ATLANTA NOIR is Available for Pre-Order

    ATLNOIR

    Order from:
    B & N,
    Amazon.com
    A Capella Books (Atlanta)

    “People who don’t know Atlanta don’t understand the codes and contradictions of the New South. Yes, Margaret Mitchell imagined the plantation Tara within the city limits, but it’s also the home of OutKast. Atlanta has captured the imagination of trash TV with Todd Chrisley’s magnolia-cream accent but also the decidedly urban antics of Love & Hip Hop. The ashes of the Civil War still hang in the air, but immigration is turning the South into the Global South.

    With Atlanta Noir, my hope was to find the writers who could show the city in all of its dizzy complexity. These fourteen writers represent the city’s many neighborhoods and demographics—from the Southern punk scene of Little Five Points to the Junior League world of Peachtree City, where things are not always as they seem. There is more going on at the local Waffle House than just scattering, smothering, and chunking. This is a major international city but it’s still the Bible Belt. A megapreacher’s past catches up with him, and gentrification cannot tame the outlaw spirit of the city too busy to hate. Our airport boasts that it is the busiest in the world; locals declare that even on the way to heaven, you have to change planes at Hartsfield-Jackson. Let us think of Atlanta Noir as an after-hours welcome to the city where we serve our sweet tea with a shot of bourbon.”

  • NEA Big Read Grants Announced

    Jones_T_SilverSparrow_pbk_BigRead_01The following organizations received grants from the NEA Big Read  to plan programming around Silver Sparrow.  Dates and times will be posted on this “Appearances” page.

    Black Storytellers of San Diego, Chula Vista, California

    Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, New York

    Chatanooga State Community College, Chattanooga, Tennessee

    Essex County Library Directors, Newark, New Jersey

    Jefferson Madison Regional Library, Charlotesville, Virginia

    Peoria Public Library, Peoria, Illinoiis

    Troy University Rosa Parks Library, Montgomery, Alabama