An Interview with Edward P. Jones

Abstract

Edward P. Jones is a writer of the kind of fiction one might have thought was going out of style: readable, absorbing, and exquisitely literary. After a startling publishing debut with Lost in the City, stories drawn from his native Washington, D. C, Jones went on to win die Pulitzer Prize for The Known World in 2004, an unusual story about a former slave-turned-slaveowner in antebellum Virginia. He published his third book in die fall of 2006, All Aunt Hagar's Children, a collection of short stories about ordinary people, whom we see as only they can be. Jones pays careful attention to presenting the circumstances of their lives and the consequences of their choices. Neither blaming the victims nor forgetting that they exist, Jones is more concerned with alerting us to the characters' contradictions, i.e., what makes them human. Unlike the brooding sensibility of Faulkner's fiction or the violent rage that characterizes Wright's work, Jones's world has a sober inclusiveness. He mediates his characters' lives with elegant, understated prose that is as compelling as it is persuasive. Each page is a reminder of his artistry and the compassion he feels for each of his characters. This interview was conducted shortly before die release of die hardcover edition of All Aunt's Hagar's Children, August 18, 2006, at Union Station in Washington, D. C. A trade paperback edition of die book was published in August 2007.