I think, when I write, one of the things that I’m really attempting to do is I’m attempting to humanize my characters. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
That larger story in ‘Salvage the Bones’ is just about survival, and I think that, in the end, there are things about this novel and about these characters’ experiences that make their stories universal stories. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
I lived in San Francisco and did the Stegner fellowship for two years, and it was amazing. From fall 2008 to spring 2010, I was there. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
The first writer that I think of immediately that I studied with at Michigan is Peter Ho Davies. He was really important to me, tackling that first novel. Just writing it. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
Before Hurricane Katrina, I always felt like I could come back home. And home was a real place, and also it had this mythical weight for me. Because of the way that Hurricane Katrina ripped everything away, it cast that idea in doubt. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote
My mother helped to integrate the local elementary school in the nineteen-sixties. Jesmyn Ward Read Quote