A. J. Verdelle

A.J. Verdelle‘s debut novel, The Good Negress, won five national prizes—including from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Bunting Institute at Harvard University, the American Library Association, and finalist prizes at The Los Angeles Times, the IMPAC/Dublin Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Her essays on subjects ranging from slavery to art to motherhood have been published widely.

She has taught at Princeton University, in the University of Vermont MFA Program, the University of Iowa Summer Writing Program, and the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, summer writing program. Verdelle currently teaches in the MFA Program at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Her new novel is forthcoming from Random House/Spiegel & Grau in 2012.