Edward P. Jones

Jones grew up poor in Washington, D.C., raised by an illiterate single mother who moved the family through eighteen different apartments during his childhood. He worked for nearly two decades summarizing tax articles for a trade publication while writing fiction almost entirely in his head, on long walks, before committing it to paper.

His debut story collection, Lost in the City, drew strong reviews but modest sales; The Known World, his first novel, took a decade to complete after he lost his day job, and won the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship in the same year, 2004.

He has continued to write sparingly and deliberately, publishing a second story collection, All Aunt Hagar's Children, and little else since.