New York Times bestselling novelist Tayari Jones is the author of four books and is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University. Her most known work, “An American Marriage,” was a 2018 Oprah’s Book Club Selection and won the 2019 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. Her other novels include “Leaving Atlanta,” “The Untelling,” and “Silver Sparrow.”
A native of Atlanta, Jones is the daughter of academics and grew up during the Civil Rights Movement.
“If you take my name, Tayari, which is Swahili, which means ‘she is prepared,’ you can tell right away I was born in 1970 and that my parents were part of this kind of African American cultural reclamation movement, and they did not care one bit that I had a name that no one could spell or pronounce,” she said on Emory University’s “One Big Question” podcast.
Jones attended Spelman College, a historically Black women's college in Atlanta, and went on to complete a master's degree in English from the University of Iowa in 1994 and a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from Arizona State University in 2000. While at Spelman, she studied under Black playwright, essayist, novelist, poet, and political activist Pearl Cleage after forging her advisor’s signature to be able to take Cleage’s class as a first-year student.
Jones’ first two novels are set in Atlanta. “Leaving Atlanta” is told from the perspective of three children against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979 to 1981. It won the 2003 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. “The Untelling” is an examination of grief by a protagonist who has to redefine herself as an adult. It won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2005. “Silver Sparrow” was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the National Education Association added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016.
Jones’ most recent novel, “An American Marriage,” tells the story of a newlywed couple who have their happily ever after destroyed after the husband is wrongfully incarcerated. Jones created fully developed and multifaceted characters after researching personal and individual effects of mass incarceration.
Jones has received many honors, including the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a United States Artist Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship, and a 2021 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Fiction.