Jesmyn Ward is a two-time winner of the National Book Award, winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award, and a recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant.” Known for her critically acclaimed fiction and non-fiction, Ward’s lyrical narratives of Black life, home, and family in Louisanna’s Gulf Coast are visceral and evocative. Moreover, while her work is often set in the same geographical region, the concerns explored within it stretch beyond the shores of the Gulf Coast, extending if not physically then cosmologically toward the Caribbean and the African continent. Yet, despite the critical celebration and geopolitical breadth of her work, Ward remains remarkably under-studied, particularly outside the United States.