Biography: Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World
Edward P. Jones sat down to write his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Known
World in 2003 after being laid off at a tax publication where he’d worked for
nineteen years. Beyond the Pulitzer, the book went on to win several other awards
including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the International IMPAC
Dublin and Lannan Literary Awards. Jones had already been recognized by critics
for his 1992 collection of short stories Lost in the City, which earned him the PEN/
Hemingway Award and placed him on the short list for the National Book Award.
Since then, Jones has published All Aunt Hagar’s Children in 2006 and explains that
his latest work, The Waiting Room, is still being written in his mind.
Jones grew up in Washington DC and draws upon a difficult childhood as the setting
and inspiration to his stories. Estranged from his Jamaican immigrant father, Jones
was raised by his mother who worked as a maid and dishwasher in local hotels and
ironically, could not read or write. Both have since passed away and his sister
Eunice was recently hit by a car in New York and killed in an altercation with driver.
Jones only brother Joseph was born with a severe mental handicap and lives in local
group home.
After encouragement from a Jesuit Priest, Edward Jones attended the College of the
Holy Cross in Massachusetts as an English major and soon went on to pursue an
MFA in creative writing at the University of Virginia. However, upon graduation he
was still cautious about depending on writing fiction for his livelihood and was
hired to write at a business publication. Even after unparalleled recognition for his
literary achievements, Jones shuns such acclaim and assumes a very humble
attitude about his work. He claims no special knowledge about writing awardwinning fiction, practices no special rituals for writing and celebrates a spectrum of
writing as equally valuable and influential (from The Bible to Jane Eyre to Who Killed
Stella Pomeroy among many, many others).