Tayari Jones Wins Women’s Prize for Fiction for Her Book, An American Marriage

Tayari Jones has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her fourth book, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, 2018). The prize, considered one of the most prestigious literary awards, honors the year’s best novel written in English by a woman of any nationality.

An American Marriage tells the story of Celestial and Roy, two Black newlyweds whose pursuit of the American dream is violently interrupted when Roy is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. The New York Times bestselling book has also earned Professor Jones an Aspen Words Literary Prize and an NAACP Image Award. In addition to An American Marriage, she is the author of three other books: Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow. 

Currently, Professor Jones serves as a professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She joined the Emory faculty in the fall of 2018 after spending the 2017-2018 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Previously, she served as a founding member of the MFA program in creative writing at Rutgers University.

Professor Jones is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, and holds master’s degrees from the University of Iowa and Arizona State University.