Edward P. Jones

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Edward P. Jones is an African American author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in 1951, he was raised in Washington, D.C. and educated at both the College of the Holy Cross and the University of Virginia.

He won both the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Lannan Foundation Grant for his first book, Lost in the City, a collection of short stories on the African American working class of the 20th century Washington, D.C. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Award.

His second book, The Known World, is a richly imagined novel set before the Civil War in Virginia. It examines issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by free black people as well as by whites. A book with many points of view, The Known World paints an enormous canvas thick with personalities and situations that show how slavery destroys but can also be transcended. It was also a National Book Award finalist and subsequently won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2005 Mr. Jones was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Mr. Jones' third book All Aunt Hagar's Children was published in 2006. Like Lost in the City it is a collection of short stories that deal with the African American working class of 20th century Washington, D.C. Several of the stories had been previously published in The New Yorker magazine.