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| Hilary Jordan |
Two interviews with Hillary Jordan; first a video interview in which she discusses the connection between her most recent novel, When She Wokeand Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and a written piece in which she talks about her debut novel Mudbound, winner of the prestigious Bellwether Prize.
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| Hilary Jordan |
Hillary Jordan received her BA in English and Political Science from Wellesley College and spent fifteen years working as an advertising copywriter before starting to write fiction. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University.
Her first novel, Mudbound, was published in 2008 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, HarperCollins Canada and Random House UK. It won the 2006 Bellwether Prize, founded by Barbara Kingsolver and awarded biennially to an unpublished debut novel that addresses issues of social justice. It also won a 2009 Alex Award from the American Library Association. Mudbound was also the 2008 NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Assoc.) Fiction Book of the Year and was longlisted for the 2009 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Paste Magazine named it one of the Top Ten Debut Novels of the Decade. It has been translated into French, Italian and Serbian. Swedish, Norwegian and Turkish editions are forthcoming in 2012.
Her second novel, When She Woke, was published in October 2011 by Algonquin and HarperCollins Canada and in April 2012 by HarperCollins UK. It has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Turkish and Chinese.
Hillary grew up in Dallas, TX and Muskogee, OK. She lives in Brooklyn.
Hillary Jordan's first novel, Mudbound, is a story of racism and well-kept secrets. Set on a desolate farm in the Mississippi Delta at the end of World War II, the novel explores the complex relations between two families: the owners of the land, and the sharecroppers who live and work on it.
