Percival Everett

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Percival Everett is the highly celebrated author of more than 30 books since his debut, Suder, was released in 1983. He is the winner of countless awards, including a PEN Award and a National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker Prize. Everett is best known for his novels I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Dr. No, Telephone, and The Trees, many of which were published by Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press. His 2001 novel Erasure was adapted into the Oscar-winning 2023 film American Fiction, written and directed by Cord Jefferson.

Everett’s latest release, James, was named one of the most anticipated books of 2024 by Time and NPR. The novel is a brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. Of the book, Kirkus raves: “The audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey…One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.” Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, James is destined to become a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Throughout his 40-year career, Everett has cultivated a reputation for his vast, genre-defying and innovative body of work―producing intellectual thrillers, satires, short stories, collections of poetry, and even paintings. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and resides in Los Angeles.