Jesmyn Ward's excellent novel, Salvage the Bones, took home this year's National Book Award for fiction. Ward grew up and currently lives in DeLisle, Mississippi. She was the 2010-2011 John and Renée Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. She was also a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, received many awards and excellent reviews.
Watch Ward's acceptance speech below (she gives a shout out to Mississippi Indipendent bookstores):