Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for fiction last night for Salvage the Bones, a haunting tale of the struggles of a 15-year-old pregnant girl as a hurricane bears down on her fictional Gulf Coast town of Bois Sauvage, Miss. Accepting the award, Ms. Ward said she had begun writing stories to honor her younger brother after his death.
“I understood that I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor, and the black and the rural people of the South,” Ms. Ward said, “so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, our lives as fraught and lovely and important, as theirs.”
“Salvage the Bones” was published by Bloomsbury USA, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing. Ms. Ward, a former writer in residence at the University of Mississippi, has also written the novel Where the Line Bleeds. Last year's winner was Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule . To be eligible,a book must have been written by a United States citizen. Winners receive $10,000 and a bronze statue. Each of the other awards will receive a separate posting on this blog.
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