Eudora Welty Lecture: Jesmyn Ward

On Wednesday, October 16 at 7:30 pm the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series presents the Eudora Welty Lecture with best-selling author Jesmyn Ward at the National Press Club.

Sponsored by the Eudora Welty Foundation, this annual lecture celebrates creative origins in the spirit of Welty’s treasured One Writer’s Beginnings.

Tickets for this event are $25 and can be purchased at the Folger Box Office at (202) 544-7077 or by visiting www.folger.edu/poetry.

Jesmyn Ward is a MacArthur Genius and two-time National Book Award winner. In 2017, she became the first woman and first person of color to win the National Book Award twice-joining the ranks of William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and John Updike.
Her writing encompasses fiction, nonfiction, and memoir. Ward’s Salvage the Bones was the winner of the 2011 National Book Award and is a troubling but ultimately empowering tale of familial bonds set amid the chaos of the hurricane. Her memoir, Men We Reaped, 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. In 2016, Ward edited the critically acclaimed anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, a New York Times bestseller. Her newest novel, the critically acclaimed Sing, Unburied, Sing, won the 2017 National Book Award.
Ward is an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University. Previous Welty Lectures were delivered by Salman Rushdie in 2016, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in 2017, and Richard Ford in 2018.
About The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series

The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series, one of the nation’s most established poetry reading programs, is noted for featuring an extensive range of outstanding poets. The series was founded in 1970 when the late O.B. Hardison, Jr., a renowned teacher, scholar, and poet, became director of the Folger Shakespeare Library and established many outreach programs to make the resources of the extraordinary research library available to the Washington community. Major funding for the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series is provided by the Lannan Foundation, which sponsors readings at the Folger and at Georgetown University, as well as a collaborative undergraduate learning program with the Lannan Fellows.

WHAT: Eudora Welty Lecture: Jesmyn Ward

WHEN: Wednesday, October 16 at 7:30pm

WHERE: The National Press Club, 529 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20045

METRO: Metro Center (red/orange/blue/silver lines)

Tickets & Information: Folger Box Office at 202.544.7077 or www.folger.edu/poetry