Jones, Gayl

Gayl Carolyn Jones (born November 23, 1949) is an American writer from Lexington, Kentucky. She is recognized as a key figure in 20th-century African-American literature. Jones published her debut novel, Corregidora (1975), at the age of 25. The book, edited by Toni Morrison, was met with critical acclaim and praised by leading intellectuals including James Baldwin and John Updike. Her sophomore novel Eva's Man was met with less renown and characterized as "dangerous" by some critics for its raw depiction of cruelty and violence. Jones continued publishing in the late 1990s, releasing The Healing and Mosquito—the former of which was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Following her husband's widely reported suicide in 1998, Jones withdrew from public life. In 2021, she published Palmares, her first novel in 22 years; it was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Imani Perry described Jones as "one of the most versatile and transformative writers of the 20th century" while Calvin Baker described her as "The Best American Novelist Whose Name You May Not Know." In The Guardian newspaper, Yara Rodrigues Fowler stated: "Gayl Jones is a literary legend. In novels and poetry, she has reimagined the lives of Black women across North, South and Central America, living in different centuries, in a way no other writer has done."