Bestselling author of two dozen novels, fresh off a National Book Award win and a Pulitzer Prize for James, his provocative retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Everett’s reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway enslaved character Jim also won Everett the Kirkus Prize and the Carnegie Medal for Fiction, as well as a finalist slot for the Booker Prize. The Chicago Tribune described James as “a masterpiece that will help redefine one of the classics of American literature while also being a major achievement on its own.”
Everett has written more than 30 books across numerous genres and has been described as one of the most versatile and respected voices in American contemporary literature. He is also one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime.
His most recent books include Telephone (for which he was a finalist for a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist); Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award); The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize in 2022 and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction); So Much Blue; Erasure; and I Am Not Sidney Poitier.
Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction in 2023, winning an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. James is currently in development as a feature film to be produced by Steven Spielberg. Everett is also a poet, having penned six books of verse.
Everett earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Miami, where he studied a broad variety of topics, including biochemistry and mathematical logic. In 1982, he earned a master’s in fiction from Brown University. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at USC.
Everett now lives in Los Angeles and is married to the novelist Danzy Senna.
“One of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” – Washington Post
“He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.” – Boston Globe
