Jared Yates Sexton

Jared Yates Sexton (born October 7, 1981) is an American author and political commentator from Linton, Indiana. He is a professor of writing and linguistics at Georgia Southern University.

Early life

Sexton grew up in southern Indiana. He studied English and Creative Writing at Indiana State University, and later received his MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University in 2008.

Career

Sexton taught Creative Writing at Ball State before accepting a position at Georgia Southern University, where he is a tenured Associate Professor of Creative Writing.^[1]

Sexton is the author of three short story collections: An End to All Things (Atticus Books), The Hook and the Haymaker (Split Lip Press), and I Am the Oil of the Engine of the World (Split Lip Press), as well as a crime novel, Bring me the Head of Yorkie Goodman (New Pulp Press), written under the pseudonym Rowdy Yates.

His work has been published in The New York Times, The New Republic, Salon, Paste, Southern Humanities Review, PANK, and in Hobart.

Political journalism

In April 2015, Sexton started covering the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attending multiple rallies for both candidates and writing regular articles for Atticus Review^[2][3] in his column Atticus on the Trail.^[4] He covered the Charleston shooting^[5] and trail of church burnings in the South.^[6] In December 2015, Sexton attended a Donald Trump rally where the Republican candidate announced his plans for a Muslim Ban. In the summer of 2016, Sexton went to another Trump rally in South Carolina, and reported on the behavior he observed there. His live tweets of the event soon went viral^[7] and garnered him national attention,^[8] which included frequent death threats.^[9] He later wrote about the experience^[10] and became a regular contributor to The New Republic and The New York Times.^[11]

In December 2016, Sexton was a guest political commentator^[12] on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, as well as on various radio programs, including KCRW.^[13]

Bibliography

Books

• An End to All Things: Stories^[14] Atticus Books (December 21, 2012) ISBN 978-0692387566
• Bring Me the Head of Yorkie Goodman^[15] (as Rowdy Yates) New Pulp Press (February 19, 2015) ISBN 978-0692387566
• The Hook and the Haymaker Split Lip Press (January 5, 2015) ISBN 978-0990903529
• I Am the Oil of the Engine of the World Split Lip Press (February 23, 2016) ISBN 978-0990903567
• The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters on Your Shore: A Story of American Rage^[16] (September 12, 2017)  ISBN 978-1619029569.

Articles

• "American Horror Story," The New Republic, June 2016.^[10]
• "Is the Trump Campaign Just a Giant Safe Space for the Right?", The New York Times, July 2016.^[11]
• "Donald Trump's Toxic Masculinity," The New York Times, October 2016.^[17]
• "Hillbilly sellout: the politics of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy are already being used to gut the working poor," Salon, March 2016.^[18]

References