Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward to speak at Wake Forest University Dec. 5

MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient and two-time National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward will be speaking at Wake Forest University tonight.

The conversation is part of the university’s Face to Face Speaker Forum, and will be held at Wait Chapel Dec. 5, from 6 to 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. 

Interview Highlights

On her motivations as an author:

"Part of the work that I'm trying to do in the writing that I do is write characters who are vivid and complicated and real and compelling enough to make people believe that they're real and that they're present, and then, that encourages empathy. Which then will, hopefully, when readers go out into the world, then they'll respond to the people who are like my characters who are out in the real world, they'll respond to them differently, right? Because they'll still have some of that sort of empathy.

Another like, I guess, aspect of my writing, and the reason that I do what I do is because I want to write stories that feature sort of recognizable characters trying to navigate the rural South. Because I think that the things that my characters are dealing with are the same types of things that kids in you know, North Carolina or kids in Kansas or kids in rural California, right … like these are all things that I think that they're dealing with in some way too. And so I hope that my stories are providing them with an experience that's so like theirs that they feel a little less alone in the world."

On her books being challenged in schools:

"I think it's a shame. I think it's criminal, almost. Like when I was growing up, you know, I was very much a library kid, because we didn't have money for books. And there was no local bookstore in my small town. And so I spent all my time in my school libraries, and I basically, sort of read my way through my school libraries. I was in third grade, and I read The Hero and the Crown. I didn't understand it at the time, but there's a scene near the end, where two of the characters have an intimate moment, right? I wasn't navigating that exactly, right? But I love that book.

When I was younger, what resonated with me was the main character who was this sort of younger girl, felt out of place in her family, she felt very lonely, she was struggling, and felt like she didn't have any friends, right? And so that book was really important to me because I feel like it helped me to navigate my world and my circumstances and what I was going through and what I was living. So it just sort of makes me angry that a book like that could be challenged. And so I mean, I want my books to be able to find teenagers who find something of worth in them, or value in them, or use them to figure out how to navigate their lives.”

On the inspiration for her upcoming Young Adult novel:

"You know, like I said, I was a library kid, and, of course, and I'm the type of writer, and I'm sure some writers are different, but I feel like most writers are like this, like we were all readers before we were writers, right? Like we fell in love with reading and books before we even begin to think that we could perhaps write stories one day or be a writer. I read voraciously when I was a child, and there were many books that I loved, but there was this book that I wanted to read that I felt like I was always like searching the library for, that I could never find. And so I guess I'm trying to write that book that I was searching for as a kid, basically for little kid me.”

Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.