Hillary Jordan

Award-winning Novelist
Author of Mudbound

“Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm.” —Barbara Kingsolver

Hillary Jordan is the author of two novels, When She Woke (Algonquin, 2011) and Mudbound (Algonguin, 2008). When She Woke—a powerful reimagining of The Scarlet Letter—is a timely fable about a stigmatized woman struggling to navigate an America of the not-too-distant future. It was the #1 Indie Next pick for October 2011, one of BookPage’s Best Books of 2011 and one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten Literary Fiction picks for the fall.

Her debut novel, Mudbound was the recipient of the Bellwether Prize awarded by Barbara Kingsolver to a debut book of conscience, social responsibility, and literary merit. The novel was praised as “a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism,” by Publishers Weekly. It received the 2009 Alex Award from the American Library Association and was named one of the Ten Best Debut Novels of the Decade by Paste Magazine. It was the 2008 NAIBA Fiction Book of the Year and was long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize. Released to instant critical acclaim, it has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide. She also presents a lecture, Change Artists: Using Art to Move the Sociopolitical Needle, that explores the diverse ways artists throughout history have made the case for political and societal change in their work, and the power of art to shatter barriers of understanding, illuminate our common humanity and foster a more equitable, less violent world.

Both novels have been translated into several languages.

View Mudbound Book Trailer

Jordan grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and a BA in English and Political Science from Wellesley College. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including StoryQuarterly and The Carolina Quarterly. She lives in Brooklyn.

About WHEN SHE WOKE (2011)

“Jordan blends hot-button issues such as separation of church and state, abortion, and criminal justice with an utterly engrossing story, driven by a heroine as layered and magnetic as Hester Prynne herself, and reminiscent, too, of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Absolutely a must-read.” —Booklist

Hannah Payne's life has been devoted to church and family. But after she's convicted of murder, she awakens in a new body to a nightmarish new life. She finds herself lying on a table in a bare room, covered only by a paper gown, with cameras broadcasting her every move to millions at home, for whom observing new "Chromes"—criminals whose skin color has been genetically altered to match the class of their crime—is a sinister form of entertainment. Hannah is a Red; her crime is murder. The victim, says the state of Texas, was her unborn child, and Hannah is determined to protect the identity of the father, a public figure with whom she shared a fierce and forbidden love. A powerful reimagining of The Scarlet Letter, When She Woke is a timely fable about a stigmatized woman struggling to navigate an America of the not-too-distant future, where the line between church and state has been eradicated and convicted felons are no longer imprisoned and rehabilitated, but "chromed" and released back into the population to survive as best they can. In seeking a path to safety in an alien and hostile world, Hannah unknowingly embarks on a journey of self-discovery that forces her to question the values she once held true and the righteousness of a country that politicizes faith and love.

About MUDBOUND (2008)

“Jordan's tautly structured debut . . . confronts disturbing truths about America's past with a directness and a freshness of approach that recalls Alice Walker's The Color Purple.” —The London Times

In Jordan's prize-winning novel, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not—charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."