Alumna Tayari Jones', C'91, recently released novel, "An American Marriage," is a 2018
Oprah Book Club selection. The novel, an epic tale of love and loss, is preceded by Jones' award-winning works "Silver Sparrow" (2011), "The Untelling" (2005), and "Leaving Atlanta" (2002).
According Algonquin Books, the publisher: "This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. "An American Marriage" is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain -- into the future."
"I decided to write about the collateral damage around [mass incarceration]—what happens to families, to relationships, to dreams for the future. How does this social wrong translate into the everyday? As a novelist, it was that messy gray area I wanted to explore." -- Tayari Jones on "An American Marriage."
"It's among [Jones'] many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words— and that those words are so glorious," said Oprah.
Jones is no stranger to receiving esteemed honors for her works. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship.
Jones serves as an associate professor in the Master of Fine Arts program at Rutgers-Newark University. She has also served as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for the 2017-2018 academic year.
Read Spelman alumna Tina McElroy Ansa's review: "Injustice and Intimacy in Tayari Jones’s 'An American Marriage'."