Edward P. Jones

Edward P. Jones was born in Washington, D.C., in 1950 and raised by his mother in near poverty. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and later earned an MFA from the University of Virginia. After working for many years as a proofreader and a columnist for Tax Notes, he published his first book, Lost in the City (1992), a collection of short stories set in Washington, D.C., which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His masterpiece, The Known World (2003), a novel about a Black slaveholder in antebellum Virginia, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. A second story collection, All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006), was also widely acclaimed. Jones’s work is celebrated for its moral complexity, meticulous historical research, and deep empathy for ordinary people. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.