Men We Reaped

Between the Covers, Part 2 Host Lisa Loving interviews writer Jesmyn Ward, about her new memoir "Men We Reaped." Jesmyn Ward grew up in poverty with a family struggling to stay together and survive in the rural South. All around her were black men facing dangers and social ills that are usually only talked about in the context of inner cities. As the sole member of her family to leave home, Jesmyn Ward discusses the place she came from with objectivity, but also with the intimacy of familiarity. Jesmyn Ward received her M.F.A from the University of Michigan and has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, for which she won the 2011 National Book Award and was honored with the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Salvage the Bones was also a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi, and lives there now.