Nationality American Occupation poetNovelist | Name Jesse Ball Role Poet | |
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Books March Book, Silence Once Begun, The Deaths of Henry King, The Way Through Doors (Vi, The Village on Horsebac Profiles | ||
Sitdown author jesse ball
Jesse Ball (born June 7, 1978) is an American novelist and poet. He has published novels, volumes of poetry, short prose, and drawings. His works are distinguished by the use of a spare style and have been compared to those of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.
Contents
- Sitdown author jesse ball
- Jesse ball reading from his march book
- Career
- Controversy
- Personal life
- Works
- Awards
- References
Jesse ball reading from his march book
Career
Ball's reputation as one of the leading novelists in the United States was first made in 2007 and 2008 with the arrival of the critically acclaimed Samedi the Deafness and then the novella The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr. The latter won the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize. He followed up that success in 2009 with The Way Through Doors, and in 2011, The Curfew," for which critics called him, "a young genius who hits all the right notes."
His career and his 2014 book Silence Once Begun were reviewed by renowned literary critic James Wood in the New Yorker in February 2014. In 2015, he was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lion Prize (also for Silence Once Begun). Later that year, he published A Cure for Suicide, which was long listed for the National Book Award.
In 2017, Granta included him on their list of Best Young American Novelists.
Controversy
On June 30th, 2017, Ball published an oped in the Los Angeles Times suggesting that all American citizens be incarcerated periodically, as a civic duty. The article likens this incarceration to already existing jury duty and states that no one, not even sitting politicians, judges or military officers would be free from it.
Personal life
Ball was born into a middle-class, English-speaking Irish-Sicilian family in Port Jefferson, New York, on Long Island. Ball's father worked in Medicaid; his mother worked in libraries. His brother, Abram, was born with Down's syndrome and attended a school some distance from the place where they lived. Ball attended Port Jefferson High School, and matriculated at Vassar College.
Following Vassar, Ball attended Columbia University, where he earned an MFA and met the poet Richard Howard. Howard helped the then 24-year-old poet publish his first volume, March Book, with Grove Press.
In Iceland, Ball met Thordis Bjornsdottir, a poet and author who he collaborated with on two books and married.