Tayari Jones

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.

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.

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“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.”

“A writer of great imagination, Irving can sell the reader on nearly any plot twist no matter how incredible — from a murderous statue of the Virgin Mary to a pride of anthropomorphized lionesses to a pair of (possibly) paranormal, (definitely) kinky bibliophiles. Under his spell, all of this seems perfectly and irresistibly plausible.” — Tayari Jones on Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving.

Tayari Jones has been selected for membership into the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Founded in 1987 by a group of writers who met in Chattanooga, the Fellowship of Southern Writers is a nonprofit organization which has for its objective the encouragement of literature in the South.  The FSW achieves its mission by commemorating outstanding literary achievement, encouraging young writers through awards, prizes and fellowships, recognizing distinction in writing by election to membership, and through other appropriate activities.

Affiliations:

Affiliated with the Chattanooga Arts & Education Council (AEC) and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the FSW holds its biennial convocation in partnership with the AEC Conference on Southern Literature.  The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Lupton Library houses its archives.

Membership:
The FSW–formed by twenty-two founding members in 1987–believes that the American South is an identifiable and distinctive cultural and social community, and that the vitality and power of its literature justify recognition and encouragement.  The Fellowship is composed of 50 active members.  New members are nominated by current members and elected by majority vote, and are drawn from among writers of fiction, poetry, drama, criticism, and history.  To be considered for membership a writer must have been born and raised, or have resided for a significant part of his or her life in the South, or have written works that in character and spirit embody aspects of the Southern experience.