February 17, 2026
Hailed as “the new Toni Morrison” by the American Booksellers Association, MacArthur Genius and two-time National Book Award winner. Ward is the youngest person to receive the Library of Congress’s Prize for American Fiction and the first woman and first person of color to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice—joining the ranks of William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and John Updike. Ward’s novels, primarily set on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, are deeply informed by the trauma of Hurricane Katrina. Ward’s first historical novel, the New York Times best seller Let Us Descend, tells the astonishing story of Annis, an enslaved teenage girl who is sold by her white father after being separated from her mother. An Oprah’s Book Club pick, Let Us Descend incorporates elements of Dante’sĚý±ő˛Ô´Ú±đ°ů˛Ô´Ç, magical realism, and slave narratives in a story about grief, resilience, imagination, and kinship that stitches the Black American experience into the very land. Her critically acclaimed novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, won the 2017 National Book Award, and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Salvage the Bones, winner of the 2011 National Book Award, is a troubling but ultimately empowering tale of familial bonds set amid the chaos of the hurricane. Men We Reaped: A Memoir, deals with the loss of five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that follows people who live in poverty. Ward edited the critically acclaimed anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, a New York Times bestseller. A professor of creative writing at Tulane University and contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Ward’s many honors include a Strauss Living Award.
The Bedri Distinguished Writers Series is made possible by a generous gift from Dr. Jonathan Bedri.
The Bedri Distinguished Writer Series was created to provide funds for the Department of English to bring contemporary writers working in narrative fiction or creative nonfiction to the Berkeley campus annually for a short stay. Nominees for the program are chosen from the finalists or winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer, National Book Critics Circle, Man Booker, or their equivalents. Over a two day visit, invited authors will participate in small setting discussions to be offered in the English Department, and then deliver a keynote talk at a public venue.Â
The series has two primary goals: a) to stir excitement, reflection and conversation in the Department of English; b) to give all Berkeley students, alumni and community members within the University’s milieu the opportunity to attend the keynote address.Â
It is hoped the endowment will not only enrich the English Department’s presence on campus, but also contribute to the culture of intellectual curiosity, discovery and growth that has long stamped Berkeley as one of the world’s greatest educational institutions.Â
JB (BA English Lit, 91¶¶Ňő Berkeley 1970; MD, U of Maryland, 1974)Â
Photo: Beowulf Sheehan