Percival Everett is an American writer known for his genre-defying, often-satirical body of work that includes more than thirty novels, short story collections, and poetry books.
Born at the military post of Fort Gordon, Georgia, and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, Everett's writing covers a variety of themes and styles, often delving into complex social issues such as race, identity, and the absurdities of modern American life. His most-acclaimed novels include Erasure (2001), a satirical take on race and the literary establishment that was adapted into the 2023 film American Fiction; I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), which humorously interrogates identity and perception; and The Trees (2021), a darkly satirical mystery that explores the legacy of racial violence in America. Everett’s style shifts between genres like satire, western, crime fiction, and literary fiction.
Everett has received numerous accolades, including the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, and The Windham Campbell Prize. He was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2022 for The Trees and his 2024 novel James was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is married to the writer Danzy Senna.
Erasure, published in 2001 and winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2002, became Percival Everett’s most universally acclaimed novel to date. The story of an African-American writer named Thelonius Ellison who is a critical darling without...
Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James, which reimagines Mark Twain’s 1885 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is about Jim, a slave who runs away with the ambition to get enough money to purchase his wife and daughter from the white slave...
