Edward P. Jones was born in 1950 in Washington, DC. He received a scholarship to Holy Cross College and earned his MFA at the University of Virginia. He has taught fiction at Princeton University, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. For 19 years, prior to being laid off in early 2002, he worked for a tax analysis firm in Arlington, VA. Following the publication in 1992 of his short story collection, Lost in the City, he won a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a PEN/Hemingway Award and the collection was short-listed for a National Book Award. His first novel, The Known World (2003), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International Dublin Literary Award. His second collection of short stories, All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006), received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story. His other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and a 2003 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Jones is professor of English at George Washington University.