Jesmyn Ward listens as interviewer Nathaniel Rich poses a question during a reading at Garden District Books in October. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
Novelist Jesmyn Ward — whose accolades include frequent comparisons to fellow Mississippian William Faulkner — will give this year’s commencement address to students at Tulane University, where she is a professor of English.
Ward won her second National Book Award last year for her latest novel, “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” and was honored with a MacArthur “Genius” grant almost simultaneously. That novel focuses on a family’s trip to Mississippi’s notorious “Parchman” state penitentiary, and Ward discussed the evolution of its supernatural elements and other aspects of her craft of writing with admirers at Uptown bookstores last fall.