Percival Everett | |
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.jpg) Everett in 2024 | |
| Born | Percival Leonard Everett II (1956-12-22)December 22, 1956 (age 68) Fort Gordon, Georgia, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, story writer |
| Education | University of Miami (BA) Brown University (MA) |
| Period | Contemporary |
| Notable works | Erasure (2001);I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009);The Trees (2021);James (2024) |
| Notable awards | Hurston/Wright Legacy Award;Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction, 2023;National Book Award for Fiction, 2024;Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2025 |
| Spouse | Danzy Senna |
| Children | 2 |
Percival Leonard Everett II (born December 22, 1956)[1] is an AmericanPulitzer Prize-winning writer[2] andDistinguished Professor of English at theUniversity of Southern California. He has described himself as "pathologically ironic"[3] and has explored numerous genres such as western fiction, mysteries, thrillers, satire and philosophical fiction.[4] His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States.
Everett is best known for his novelsErasure (2001),I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), andThe Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022Booker Prize. His 2024 novelJames, also a finalist for theBooker Prize, won theKirkus Prize, theNational Book Award for Fiction, and thePulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Erasure was adapted as the filmAmerican Fiction (2023), written and directed byCord Jefferson, starringJeffrey Wright,Sterling K. Brown, andLeslie Uggams.
Percival L. Everett, named after his father, was born inFort Gordon,Georgia, where his father, Percival Leonard Everett, was asergeant in theU.S. Army. His mother was Dorothy (née Stinson) Everett. When the younger Everett was still an infant, the family moved toColumbia, South Carolina, where he lived through high school. He has a sister, Denise Everett, a physician inRaleigh, NC.[5] His father became a dentist and his parents continued to live in South Carolina. The younger Everett eventually moved to the American West.[5]
Everett earned abachelor's degree inphilosophy from theUniversity of Miami.[6] He studied a broad variety of topics, including biochemistry and mathematical logic.[7] In 1982, he earned amaster's degree in fiction fromBrown University.[8]
Everett now lives inLos Angeles, California, with his wife, the novelistDanzy Senna, and their two children.[9][10]
Everett's great-grandmother was at one point enslaved.[11]
While completing his M.A. degree, Everett wrote his first novel,Suder (1983). His lead character was Craig Suder, aSeattle Mariners third baseman in a major league slump, both on and off the field.[12]
Everett's second novel,Walk Me to the Distance (1985), features veteran David Larson after his return fromVietnam. Larson becomes involved in a search for the developmentally disabled son of a sheep rancher in Slut's Whole,Wyoming. The novel was later adapted, with an altered plot, as anABC-TV movie titledFollow Your Heart.[12][13] Everett disowned this adaptation, stating: "I never saw it. I read the script, and I didn't like it. The changes that they made were so grotesque, there was no way to embrace that at all."[14]
Cutting Lisa, Everett's third novel (1986; reissued 2000), begins with John Livesey meeting a man who has performed aCaesarean section. This prompts the protagonist to evaluate his relationships.[15]
In 1987, Everett publishedThe Weather and Women Treat Me Fair: Stories, a collection of short stories set mostly in the contemporary western United States.
In 1990, Everett published two books:Zulus, which combines the grotesque and the apocalypse; andFor Her Dark Skin, a new version ofMedea by theGreek playwrightEuripides.[12]
Switching genres, Everett next wrote a children's book,The One That Got Away (1992). This illustrated book for young readers follows three cowboys as they attempt to corral "ones", the mischievous numerals.[16]
Returning to novels, Everett published his first book-lengthwestern,God's Country (novel)God's Country, in 1994. In this novel, Curt Marder and his black tracker Bubba search "God's country" for Marder's wife, who has been kidnapped by bandits. Marder is not sure whether he wants to find her. The book is a parody of westerns and the politics of race and gender. It includes across-dressingGeorge Armstrong Custer.[12]
In 1996, Everett published two books:Watershed has a contemporary western setting, in which the lonerhydrologist Robert Hawkes meets aNative American "small person", who helps him come to terms with the interrelation of people. That year, Everett also published his second collection of stories,Big Picture.[12]
InFrenzy (1997), Everett returned to Greek mythology. Vlepo,Dionysos's assistant, is forced to undergo a "frenzy" of odd activities, including becoming lice and bedroom curtains at different times during the story, which he narrates. These events occur so that he can explain these experiences to Dionysos, the demi-god.[12]
Glyph (1999) is thestory within a story of Ralph, a baby who chooses not to speak but has extraordinary muscle control and an IQ nearing 500. He writes notes to his mother on a variety of literary topics based on books she supplies. Ralph is kidnapped several times by parties trying to exploit his special skills. His odyssey (as "written" by four-year-old Ralph) teaches him more about love than intellect.[17]
Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001) is Everett's firstnovella. In it, Rhino Tanner attempts to tameMother Nature with a commercialization of theGrand Canyon.
Erasure (2001) is a satirical novel that portrays how the publishing industry pigeonholesAfrican-American writers. The novel, a metafictional piece, revolves around the main character's decision to write an outrageous novella, based among the black urban poor and dissolute, titledMy Pafology. The writer renames it asFuck, wanting to push the edge of acceptability and influenced by what he calls ghetto fiction, such asRichard Wright'sNative Son (1940) andSapphire's novelPush (1996).[18]
A History of the African-American People (proposed) byStrom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid (2004), is anepistolary novel that chronicles the characters Percival Everett andJames Kincaid as they work with US SenatorStrom Thurmond (R-SC) (occasionally) and his aide's crazy assistant, Barton Wilkes. The latter orders the authors around even as he stalks them.[19]
Also in 2004, Everett released a third collection of short stories,Damned If I Do: Stories,[20] as well as the novelAmerican Desert. InAmerican Desert, Ted Street plans to drown himself in the ocean but is killed in a traffic accident on the way there. Three days later, Street suddenly sits up in his casket at the funeral, although his head is severed and he lacks a beating heart. Throughout the rest of the novel, Street undergoes an odyssey of self-discovery about what being alive really means, exploring religion, revelation, faith, zealotry, love, family, mediasensationalism, and death.[21]
Wounded: A Novel (2005) tells the story of John Hunt, a horse trainer confronted withhate crimes against a homosexual and a Native American. Hunt avoids getting mixed up in the political nature of these crimes, taking action only when he is forced to do so.[22]
Everett's 2006 collection of poetry,re:f (gesture), features one of his paintings on the front cover. His 2010 poetry book,Swimming Swimmers Swimming, was published byRed Hen Press.
The Water Cure (2007) is a novel about Ishmael Kidder, who has had a successful career as a romance novelist until the death of his daughter, when his life takes a dark turn. In a remote cabin in New Mexico, Kidder has imprisoned a man he believes to be his daughter's killer. The book's title refers to one of the torture techniques Kidder uses on the man, namelywaterboarding.[23]
In 2009,Graywolf Press releasedI Am Not Sidney Poitier. The protagonist, named Not Sidney Poitier, meets challenges relating to identity and racial segregation across North America. He faces similar challenges in identity construction in relation to his adopted white father,Ted Turner.[24]
Assumption: A Novel (2011) is a triptych of stories with some characters who have been in earlier Everett stories. The story "Big" returns to the character of Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town. He is on the trail of an old woman's murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase and soon finds himself on the seamier side of Denver, in a hippie commune.
In 2013, Graywolf Press publishedPercival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel,[25] a novel in which a man visits his father in a nursing home, where his father appears to be writing a novel from the point of view of his son. Eight years later, the same press publishedThe Trees, a satirical novel about historic and contemporarylynchings in Mississippi, the South and across the US. (It was published in the UK byInflux Press).The Trees won theAnisfield-Wolf Book Award and was shortlisted for the2022 Booker Prize.[26]
Dr. No, published by Graywolf Press in 2022, won the 2023PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was named a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics award for fiction.[27]
Everett received a 2023Windham Campbell Prize for fiction.[28]
In 2023, the filmAmerican Fiction was released, with ascreenplay adapted by its directorCord Jefferson from Everett's 2001 novelErasure. Among other awards,American Fiction wonBest Adapted Screenplay at the96th Academy Awards.[29]
James,[30] published by Doubleday in 2024, is a re-imagining ofMark Twain'sAdventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway slave characterJim.[31] Everett humanizes the character, who goes by James, reinventing him as a wise and literate man, who has conversations with enlightenment philosophers in his dreams and teaches other enslaved people to read. James and the other black characters in the book hide their literacy and wisdom from the white characters, who would feel threatened by educated blacks and further punish them. Although opposed tobook banning, Everett commented that he hoped his reimagined version would get banned "only because I like irritating those people who do not think and read".[3]James was longlisted for the2024 Booker Prize[32] and chosen for the Booker Prize shortlist.[33] The novel won theKirkus Prize for Fiction,[34] theNational Book Award for Fiction,[35] and thePulitzer Prize for Fiction.[36]
In 2025, the Chicago Public Library Foundation gave the Carl Sandburg Literary Award to Everett.[37][38]
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Everett's stories have been included in thePushcart Prize Anthology andBest American Short Stories.
Everett received an honorary doctorate from theCollege of Santa Fe in 2008. In 2015, he received aGuggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, as well as thePhi Kappa Phi Presidential Medallion from theUniversity of Southern California.
In 2016, Everett was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,[39] and in 2023 he was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters.[40]
Everett was named on theTime 100 list of Most Influential People of 2025.[41]
