Percival Everett
Award-winning Novelist
“Percival's talent is multifaceted, sparked by a satiric brilliance that could place him alongside Wright and Ellison.” — Publisher's Weekly
Percival Everett is the author of seventeen novels, three collections of short fiction, and two volumes of poetry. Among his novels are I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), The Water Cure (2008), Wounded, Glyph, Erasure, American Desert, For Her Dark Skin, Zulus, Cutting Lisa, Watershed, and God's Country.
He is the recipient of the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, the Academy Award from an American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, and a New American Writing Award. His stories have been included in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Short Stories. He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991. He teaches fiction writing and critical theory and is currently Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
With these novels and collections of stories to his credit, Everett has developed a reputation as a wordsmith. One critic describes him as a lyrical writer, whose “stark and sometimes powerful prose” leaves a lasting impression. His 1994 book God’s Country drew measured praise from the New York Times: “[The novel] starts sour, then abruptly turns into Cowpoke Absurdism, ending with an acute hallucination of blood, hate and magic. It’s worth the wait. The novel sears.”
He has worked as a musician, a horse trainer, and a teacher. He lives with his wife and two sons in Los Angeles.
“If part of the mission of the artist is to expand the thinking of the culture in which he exists, I have my work cut out for me.” —Percival Everrett
About I AM NOT SIDNEY POITIER (2009)
An irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America. I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier. Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett's hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: 'What's your name?' a kid would ask. 'Not Sidney,' I would say. 'Okay, then what is it?'
