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Novelist Jesmyn Ward lost five men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide and the bad luck that follow people living in poverty in the deep south of America, particularly black men. Here she talks to fellow US novelist Dr Jewell Parker Rhodes about the story of her life and family in Men We Reaped. It is a story of entrenched racism and grinding poverty and of men who can do no right and women who stand in for family. Ward’s mother cleaned the homes of wealthy white people so she could send her daughter to school.

Ward, who is flying in from the States to be with us, is author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award for fiction.  She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama. Rhodes’ novels on the themes of history, African-American spirituality, race and gender have won awards such as the American Book Award and the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence. She is Piper Endowed Chair of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Presented by the Virginia G Piper Centre for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.