Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones

African American Literature Book Club - The #1 Site for "Readers of Black Literature"

Home • Back • Author Home • Up • Next • Author Profiles • Book Profiles • Writer's Resources • Reviews • Events • About Us • Buy Any Book • Advertise

Tayari Jones was born in Atlanta, GA in 1970. She lived there for most of her life. With the exception of the year she lived in Nigeria, she lived there until she finished Spelman College in 1991. After Spelman, she went to the University of Iowa to pursue a Ph.D. in English. After earning a Masters, she decided that she wanted to do something more hands-on, she moved to Prairie View, TX where she taught Developmental Reading. As a teacher, Tayari spent three years encouraging her students to follow their dreams. She realized that it was time to start taking her own advice.

In 1996 she decided to go back to graduate school: this time, to study creative writing. A chance meeting with Jewell Parker Rhodes afforded Tayari the opportunity to work toward a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing. With only a promise from Ms. Parker Rhodes, she drove two thousand miles to accept a scholarship to Arizona State University.

Leaving Atlanta, a novel based on her experiences living in Atlanta during the Atlanta Child Murders, was her Masters thesis

The Untelling
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0446532460
Format: Hardcover, 336pp
Pub. Date: April 2005
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated

Book Description
Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years ago, a family outing took the lives of her father and baby sister, leaving remaining members of this fractured family struggling to live with their own guilt—real and imagined. At 25, Aria believes she can reinvent herself through her planned marriage, with all its promise of a family of her own. But the reality of infertility changes Aria's life as swiftly and irrevocably as the urban landscape around her. With prose that is both eloquent and unflinching, Jones charts the emotional journey of her characters as they explore the painful territory of truth and the healing landscape of forgiveness.

Leaving Atlanta
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0446528307
Format: Hardcover, 286pp
Pub. Date: July 2002
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated

Read an AALBC.com review by Thumper

Book Description
It's summer in Atlanta and black children are disappearing. By the time the heinous killing spree is over, 29 will be dead. This haunting menace provides the backdrop to the exquisitely evocative stories of three children fighting the everyday battles of adolescence: Tasha, who is coping with her parents' separation and the sweet pain of a first crush on a tender boy; Rodney, who struggles to make friends and wants only to please his abusive father; and Octavia, who faces down the popular crowd at school and must straddle the line between protected and protective daughter. Ultimately, these individual stories reveal the loss of innocence that accompanies the passage from childhood to adulthood.

Related Links

Tayari Jones Homepage
http://www.tayarijones.com

The un-tortured writer
by Richard Nilsen, The Arizona Republic (Jul. 7, 2003)
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/arts/articles/0707tayari07.html