Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward’s writing marries a devastating realism with a unique sensitivity to the long echoes of violence and trauma.  Her National Book Award-winning novel Salvage the Bones brought mythic resonance to the ordeal of a family from a town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during the days just before and after the devastation of hurricane Katrina.  Her new novel Sing, Unburied, Sing nods to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison with a tale of addiction, imprisonment, love and struggle —  told by the living, the dying and by ghosts.  In this episode, Miwa Messer talks with Jesmyn Ward about her electric fiction.