Jerald Walker

Jerald Walker has published in magazines such as Creative Nonfiction, The Missouri Review, The Harvard Review, Mother Jones, The Iowa Review, and The Oxford American, and he has been widely anthologized, including in the Pushcart Prizes and six times in The Best American Essays series. He is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the 2011 PEN New England/L.L. Winship Award for Nonfiction and named a Best Memoir of the Year by Kirkus Reviews; The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult; How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction, and winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction; and Magically Black and Other Essays, Finalist for the 2025 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, Finalist for the 2025 New England Book Award, Longlisted for the 2025 Massachusetts Book Award, and a Semi-Finalist for the 2026 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and James A. Michener Foundation.