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Tickets strongly recommended! Jesmyn Ward, celebrated as “the heir apparent to Toni Morrison” (LitHub) and one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation, will deliver the 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts.
Book signing to follow, with sales by The King’s English Bookshop
Ward is the author of Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), both winners of the National Book Award, as well as editor of the influential anthology, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (2016). Her work explores the rural South, race, environmental justice, and historical memory.
Her most recent novel, Let Us Descend (2023), an Oprah Book Club pick, was named one of the year’s best books by The Washington Post, Time, The New Yorker, and others. The title, drawn from Dante’s Inferno, reflects the novel’s engagement with history and spirit. NPR described it as “the literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours.”
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Salt Lake City Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
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