Tayari Jones

On June 5th, An American Marriage was announced as the winner of the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction

An American Marriage, her latest novel, was published on February 6, 2018 by Algonquin. On the same day, Oprah Winfrey announced that An American Marriage would be a pick of Oprah's Book Club. An American Marriage is about an African-American couple whose lives are shaken when the husband is arrested for a crime he did not commit. Winfrey has also announced that she is producing a film adaptation of the book. President Barack Obama included An American Marriage on his summer 2018 reading list.

In February of 2018, Oprah Winfrey announced that her latest book club pick was Jones’ novel, An American Marriage. Winfrey said, “It's one of those books I could not put down. And as soon as I did, I called up the author, and said, 'I've got to talk to you about this story.'"

Jones is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. She is also a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Silver Sparrow, Jones's third novel, was published by Algonquin Books in 2011. It was an American Booksellers Association number 1 "Indie Next" pick.

The Untelling is also set in Atlanta. Described in Publishers Weekly as Jones's "deep-felt second novel", the book examines how the protagonist comes to terms with the loss of key members of her family as a child before having to redefine herself all over again in her mid-twenties. It was awarded the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2005.

Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, is a three-voiced coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-81. This novel, which was written while she was a graduate student at Arizona State University, is based on her experience as a child in Atlanta during that period. It won the 2003 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Aletha Spann of 30Nineteen Productions has purchased the film option for Leaving Atlanta.

Tayari Jones (born November 30, 1970 in Atlanta, Georgia) is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which was a 2018 Oprah's Book Club Selection, and won the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. She is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently a member of the English faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University, and recently returned to her hometown after a decade in New York City. Jones was appointed an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-large at Cornell University (effective July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2025).