Edward P. Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Known World, will read from his work at New York University’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 W. 10th Street, on Thursday, November 20, at 7 p.m. The reading will be accompanied by a discussion between Jones and NYU Creative Writing professor Chuck Wachtel. The event is free and open to the public. For further information, call 212.998.8816 or visit www.cwp.fas.nyu.edu.
A MacArthur Fellow, Jones is also the author of two short story collections: All Aunt Hagar’s Children, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Lost in the City, recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award. Besides the Pulitzer, The Known World also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lannan Literary Award.
A graduate of Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, Jones was the first member of his family to attend college. He earned an M.F.A. at the University of Virginia. He has taught fiction at Princeton University, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Callaloo.
In its 2003 review of The Known World, the New York Times wrote: “[It] is an achievement of epic scope and architectural construction, which nonetheless reads like a string of folk tales told by someone slyly watching for your reaction - tales told by a conjurer who distracts you so well that you never know what hit you.” Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post Book World crowned it “the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years.”