Edward P. Jones

writer, 2004 Pulitzer Prize

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 in 20th century Washington, D.C. In 2005 Jones was also awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. His second book, *The Known World*, is an acclaimed 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. It won the National Book Award in 2004 and subsequently won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Jones's 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-Americans revolving around Washington, D.C. Several of the stories had been previously published in *The New Yorker magazine*.