Craft Advice with Jesmyn Ward

On the music of language, fresh eyes, braided stories, multiple narrators, good dialogue, and revision.

Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.

Jesmyn Ward’s prose is simply exquisite. Elegant, lyrical, yet weighty and sonorous, Jesmyn’s words sink us deep within the marrow of her characters, including herself. Her structures are complex yet fluid. The sound of her language takes my breath away. She has twice won the National Book Award, the only woman or Black American to do so: once for Salvage The Bones and the second time for Sing, Unburied, Sing. Oprah picked her most recent novel, Let Us Descend for her bookclub. She’s also written Where The Line Bleeds and, one of my favorite books ever, her transcendent memoir Men We Reaped.

It was an absolute joy to speak with Jesmyn about her writing practice. I learned a lot. I imagine you will, too!

If you missed part one of our interview, you can read it here.

Where do you write?

I have a little room in my house with bookshelves that my partner and my nephew installed years ago. It’s my library.

You often do interviews from there.