20 Facts About Gayl Jones

Gayl Carolyn Jones was born on November 23,1949 and is an American writer from Lexington, Kentucky.

Gayl Jones is recognized as a key figure in 20th-century African-American literature.

Gayl Jones was born on November 23,1949, to Franklin and Lucille Gayl Jones.

Gayl Jones's father was a cook and her mother a homemaker and writer.

Gayl Jones grew up in Speigle Heights, a neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky, in a house with no indoor toilet.

Gayl Jones grew up in a storytelling family: Her grandmother wrote plays for her church, and her mother constantly made up stories to entertain the children and other family members.

Gayl Jones recalled, "I began to write when I was seven, because I saw my mother writing, and because she would read stories to my brother and me, stories that she had written".

Gayl Jones first attended segregated schools but for high school enrolled as one of the few Black students at Henry Clay High School.

Gayl Jones was academically successful and earned a recommendation, through writer Elizabeth Hardwick, to Connecticut College.

Gayl Jones graduated in 1971, receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

Gayl Jones then began a graduate program in creative writing at Brown University, studying under poet Michael Harper and earning a Master of Arts in 1973 and a Doctor of Arts in 1975.

In 1975, Gayl Jones published her first novel Corregidora at the age of 26.

Gayl Jones left her faculty position in 1983 and moved to Europe, where she wrote and published Die Vogelfaengerin in Germany, and a poetry collection, Xarque and Other Poems.

Gayl Jones's 1998 novel The Healing was a finalist for the National Book Award, although the media attention surrounding her novel's release focused more on the controversy in her personal life than on the work itself.

Gayl Jones's papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Gayl Jones has described herself as an improvisor, and her work bears out that statement: like a jazz or blues musician, Gayl Jones plays upon a specific set of themes, varying them and exploring their possible permutations.

Gayl Jones succinctly renders the destructive romantic relationships between Black men and women, a lingering effect of the patriarchal slave system where Black bodies were abused and consumed.

Gayl Jones's novel Palmares, about "the largest and best known of Brazil's quilombos, communities established by Africans who had escaped slavery", was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction.

In 2022, Gayl Jones was honored for lifetime achievement at 43rd annual American Book Awards, presented by Ishmael Reed's Before Columbus Foundation.

Gayl Jones's novel, The Birdcatcher, was a National Book Award finalist for fiction in 2022.