American novelist and short-story writer whose works depict the effects of slavery in antebellum America and the lives of working-class African Americans.

Jones attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Mass., and studied writing at the University of Virginia. He taught briefly, and then for 10 years he worked as a proofreader. His debut collection of short stories, Lost in the City (1993), earned critical recognition, but more than a decade passed before his next book.

Jones began to write full time only after losing his proofreading job in 2002. The result was The Known World (2003), a novel that was greeted as a masterpiece and won numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. A third book followed in 2006, All Aunt Hagar's Children, a collection of short stories that returned to the working-class Washington, D.C., in which Jones's first book was set. Like Lost in the City, it drew comparisons to James Joyce's Dubliners.