Library of Congress Honors ‘Salvage the Bones’ Author Jesmyn Ward

The 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction went to Jesmyn Ward, who at 45 is the youngest person ever to receive the Library Fiction Award and is being honored for her lifetime of work on racism and social injustice.

Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” won the 2011 National Book Award and its “Sing, Unburied, Sing” won the 2017 National Book Award. His non-fiction work includes the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist memoir “Men We Reaped” and the 2020 work “Navigate Your Stars.”

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She is also the editor of the anthology “Fire This Time: A New Generation Talks Race.” Ward, who is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017.

The virtual awards ceremony will take place at the 2022 National Book Festival on September 3 in Washington, D.C.

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The annual American Fiction Award honors an American literary writer whose body of work is “distinguished not only by mastery of art but also by originality of thought and imagination.”

“I am deeply honored to receive this award, not only because it aligns my work with a legendary company, but because it also recognizes the difficulty and rigor of meeting America on the page, evaluating it as a lover would do: lucid, open sincere, eager to empathize and connect,” Ward said in a statement. “It’s our calling, and I’m grateful for it.”

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