Telling on Yourself with Your Fiction, featuring Tayari Jones

This week’s episode features an onstage interview with Tayari Jones, author of the New York Times best-seller, An American Marriage. Brooke and Tayari sat down at the Bay Area Book Festival in early May—and we’re thrilled to be able to share what transpired on Write-Minded. Tayari is forthcoming and funny. We gain insight into her motivations to write, her perseverance as a novelist, and how, in her words, novelists tend to tell on themselves through their fiction. What we learn about Tayari and her worldview through this telling is a gift—so enjoy!

ABOUT TAYARI JONES

New York Times best-selling author, Tayari Jones, is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.