Hailed as “the new Toni Morrison” by the American Booksellers Association, Jesmyn Ward is a MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient and a two-time National Book Award-winner for her novels Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones (both in 2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (in 2017). She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.