In her 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts on October 23, Jesmyn Ward shared with the audience at the Salt Lake City Public Library a new piece to appear in an upcoming collected edition of her writing. A personal memoir essay, Ward’s lecture recounted her writing of her recent novel, Let Us Descend, and its place in her life and development as a writer.

After years of research and reflection on American chattel slavery, Ward began the novel in 2019. However, her writing was interrupted in early 2020 by the sudden death of her partner after a rapid illness in January, followed by Covid restrictions. Ward examined her deep grief and despair of that period in the context of her earlier forms of survival, including her childhood mauling by a pit bull, as well as her own premature birth.

This period of suspended writing was punctuated by her September 2020 essay for Vanity Fair, “On Witness and Respair,”  which discussed her own personal grief, the broader devastation of Covid, and the George Floyd protests. Nearly a year later, Ward returned to her previous pace of writing, recommitting to her art and, in particular, to its spiritual and ancestral dimensions, which are central to Let Us Descend. In both her lecture and discussion with Tanner Humanities Center Director Scott Black, Ward urged her audiences and readers to hold time and space for the work of grief, out of which can emerge hope and repair.

Questions from the audience touched on the braided time-structure of her memoir, Men We Reaped, as well as on her decision to remain in Mississippi with her extended family. In response to questions about her own teaching of creative writing at Tulane (where she is Professor of English and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities) Ward noted her students’ responsiveness to works like Bryan Washington’s Lot and Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.

In addition to the forthcoming collection which will contain a version of her Gardner Lecture, Ward is also at work on a young adult novel, as well as an adult novel set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of Hurricane Camille in 1969. In the book-signing following the event, many audience members shared with Ward the profound personal impact of her work.

Robert Carson — Associate Director, Tanner Humanities Center

The David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Utah is administered by the Tanner Humanities Center in collaboration with the College of Humanities and the College of Fine Arts. The Gardner Lecture was founded in the University of Utah Graduate School in honor of former President David Pierpont Gardner. The Gardner Lecture features distinguished scholars and artists from the humanities and the fine arts in alternating years. The lectureship is funded by the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. 

Views expressed in Tanner Humanities Center events do not represent the official position of the Center or the University of Utah.