Edward P. Jones

Novelist

• Born: October 5, 1950
• Place of Birth: Washington, D. C.

Biography

Edward P. Jones was born on October 5, 1950, in Arlington, Virginia. His father abandoned the family when Jones was a preschooler, leaving Jones and his sister to be raised by his mother. His mother supported the family by working in Washington, DC, hotel kitchens and as a hotel maid.

Jones attended a Catholic school for kindergarten and part of first grade before transferring into the Washington, DC, public school system. Jones was an exceptional student and received a scholarship to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He began writing fiction during his sophomore year. Although he was encouraged by a professor, he did not consider writing as a career option. He graduated with a B.A. in 1972, and continued his education at the University of Virginia, earning an M.F.A. in 1981.

After receiving his undergraduate degree, Jones returned to Washington, DC, where he lived with, and cared for, his terminally ill mother. During this period, he took on a variety of jobs, including a position at Science magazine. He went on to work as a freelance columnist for Tax Notes for over a decade. The work was boring and tedious, but steady.

In 1975, Jones read a short story in Essence magazine and felt he could do better. That same year, he wrote and sold his first story to Essence. Jones continued to sell short stories, but could not support himself through his writing, and kept his freelance work.

In the late 1970s, Jones read James Joyce’s Dubliners while in graduate school. He decided to attempt to write a similar account of average people and their daily lives set in Washington, DC. The result of his efforts was the critically acclaimed and well-received Lost in the City, a collection of short stories published in 1992 that follow African Americans through their social and personal struggles in DC. Jones was commended for his mastery of language and his ability to capture African American dialects, although he used those dialects sparingly throughout his stories, intensifying their impact.

Lost in the City was followed by his first novel, The Known World (2003). Jones had read of African Americans in the South who were slave owners. Fascinated, Jones gathered all the books he could on the subject and created The Known World mentally. The story follows protagonist Henry Townsend as he buys his freedom and then purchases his own enslaved African Americans. The novel initially gained much attention due to its interesting subject matter, but maintained the interest through Jones’s ability to transfer the novel’s focus away from racial issues and onto personal freedoms and the idea of owning an individual. Jones published a second short story collection in 2006, All Aunt Hager's Children. This collection of fourteen stories, five of which were published in the New Yorker, once again features ordinary citizens living in Washington, DC.

Jones has received the National Book Foundation Award and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Lost in the City, both in 1992. He was awarded both the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. In 2024, two of his books made the New York Times's list of 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century: The Known World and All Aunt Hager's Children. Jones has been the recipient of grants from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. As of 2024, Jones was a professor of English at George Washington's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.

"CCAS Professor Has Two Books Named as NYT's Best Books of the Twenty-First Century." GW Today, 12 July 2024, gwtoday.gwu.edu/ccas-professor-has-two-books-named-nyts-best-books-21st-century. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Scott, A.O. "Visiting an Elusive Writer, and Revisiting His Masterpiece." The New York Times, 16 July 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/books/review/edward-p-jones-interview-the-known-world.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.