Tayari Jones changed how setting is used in storytelling through her portrayal of Atlanta. Inspired by the city’s history of both success and struggle, she creates stories that leave a lasting impression on readers. The city’s pulse beats within most of her novels, as if it were a character, too.

Tayari Jones was born on November 30, 1970. She was raised in the Cascade Heights neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents, Drs. Mack and Barbara Jones, were both deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and PhDs in the social sciences. This fostered a household intensely focused on racial and social justice.

Growing up in Atlanta during the 1970s and 1980s, the Atlanta Child Murders cast a shadow over Jones’ childhood and many others in the metro area.  From 1979 to 1981, over 25 African American children and young adults were murdered in Atlanta. This series of tragedies profoundly informed Jones’ worldview and her writing.

The experiences that shaped her childhood ultimately fueled her passion for storytelling, and led her to pursue a formal education in literature. After graduating from high school, she attended Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta. There she studied under writer Pearl Cleage, a well-known American playwright and essayist, and earned her bachelor’s degree in English in 1991. She continued her education by earning a master’s degree in English from the University of Iowa in 1994, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Arizona State University in 2000.

Jones formally entered the literary scene with her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta (2002). Written from the perspective of three elementary school children, the book captures the terror and heartbreak of the Atlanta Child Murders that Jones witnessed in her youth. Her next effort, The Untelling (2005), follows a young woman navigating grief and identity in post-civil rights era Atlanta. In 2011, she published Silver Sparrow, a critically acclaimed novel about a bigamist’s two families, which the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) included in its Big Read library in 2016.

Her massive commercial and critical breakthrough arrived with her fourth novel, An American Marriage (2018). The novel tells the gripping story of an upwardly mobile Black couple in Atlanta whose lives are derailed when the husband is wrongfully convicted of a crime. It became an instant New York Times bestseller. In 2026, Jones released her fifth novel, Kin, a story delving into Southern history and family dynamics set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South.

Jones’ work has garnered some of the literary world’s highest honors. Her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta, won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Untelling, received the Lillian Smith Book Award. Her fourth novel, An American Marriage, became an Oprah’s Book Club selection and was featured on President Barack Obama’s 2018 summer reading list. The novel also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award. In 2018, Jones was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021, adding to earlier fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Radcliffe Institute, and United States Artists. Her 2026 novel, Kin, earned her a rare second Oprah’s Book Club selection.

Today, she passes on her craft to the next generation. Jones is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, and an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. Tayari Jones became one of the South’s strongest writers through not only her vivid settings, but her memorable characters and thoughtful storytelling.