The National Book Award is, simply said, one of the profoundest honors a writer can receive, and, usually, it goes to a book written by an author, who’s, you know, been around a little while. So it was quite the surprise when this year a more out-of-nowhere work of fiction claimed the prize: Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward. But the author’s lack of a decades-long track record doesn’t diminish the text, and in fact enhances it, as this emotionally powerful, lyrical tour de force studies a working class family—including pregnant teen protagonist and dogfighting brother—as it confronts Hurricane Katrina head-on. But Ward is no casual observer of this sort of struggle; for this new headliner in the literary world, this is just a slice of real life. With all this in mind, and in advance of her reading tonight at the Mayor’s Book Club at the John Henry Faulk Central Library, we called her up to talk about memory, writing in the wake of tragedy, and a newfound audience. more ›