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Title
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Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
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Description
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Jerry W. Ward, Jr.,a retired Professor of English, Richard Wright scholar, and literary critic, lives in New Orleans. He taught for 32 years at Tougaloo College and 10 years at Dillard University.
Among his professional honors are: Kent Fellowship (1975-77); Teacher of the Year Award from Tougaloo College (1992); two UNCF Distinguished Scholar Awards (1981-82 and 1987-88); the Humanities Teacher Award (1995) and the Public Humanities Award (1997) from the Mississippi Humanities Council; the Moss Chair of Excellence in English (1996, University of Memphis); National Humanities Center Fellowship (1999-2000). In 2000, he received the Darwin T. Turner Award of Excellence from the African American Literature and Culture Society. He was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent in 2001 and received the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award from the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration in 2011. In 2018, he received the Daryl Cumber Dance Award for Lifetime Achievement from the College Language Association.
Ward is a founding member of the Richard Wright Circle and co-editor of Redefining American Literary History(1990), Black Southern Voices(1992), The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008), and The Cambridge History of African American Literature (2011). He edited the anthology Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African American Poetry (Mentor, 1997), and his poems and essays have been published in such journals as The Southern Quarterly, Xavier Review, African American Review, Literature and Medicine, Callaloo, Mississippi Quarterly, and Black Magnolias. His most recent books are THE KATRINA PAPERS: A Journal of Traumaand Recovery(2008), The China Lectures(2014), FRACTAL SONG: Poems(2016), Blogs and Other Writing(2018). His work-in-progress is Richard Wright: An Unending Hunger for Life.
