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Percival Everett

(Percival L Everett)

(b.1956)

Percival Everett is the author of eleven novels including the recent Erasure, which won the inaugural Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction. He lives with his wife on a small ranch and teaches at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Awards: Libbys (2025), NBA (2024), Wodehouse (2022) see all

Genres: Literary Fiction, Historical

Novels

   Walk Me to the Distance (1985)
   For Her Dark Skin (1990)
   Zulus (1990)
   God's Country (1994)
   Watershed (1996)
   Frenzy (1996)
   Suder (1999)
   Glyph (1999)
   Cutting Lisa (2000)
   Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001)
   Erasure (2001)
   A History of the African-American People (2004) (with James Kincaid)
   American Desert (2004)
   Wounded (2005)
   Water Cure (2007)
   I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009)
   Assumption (2011)
   Percival Everett by Virgil Russell (2013)
   So Much Blue (2017)
   Telephone (2020)
   The Trees (2021)
   Dr. No (2022)
   James (2024)

Collections

   The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair (1987)
   Big Picture (1996)
   Damned If I Do (2004)
   Swimming Swimmers Swimming (poems) (2011)
   Half an Inch of Water (2015)
   Trout's Lie (poems) (2015)
   RE: F (Gesture) (poems) (2017)
   Two Stories (2018)
   The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson Of Roanoke VA, 1843 (poems) (2019)
   Sonnets for a Missing Key (poems) (2024)

Picture Books show

Non fiction

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Books containing stories by Percival Everett

The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (2021)
edited by
John Freeman

Gumbo (2002)
A Celebration of African American Writing
edited by
Marita Golden and E Lynn Harris

The Best American Short Stories 2000 (2000)
(Best American Short Stories)
edited by
E L Doctorow and Katrina Kenison

More books

Awards

	2025 Libby Award for Best Historical Fiction : James
	2024 National Book Award for Fiction : James
	2024 Kirkus Prize for Fiction : James
	2022 Wodehouse Prize : The Trees

Award nominations

	2025 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee) : James
	2025 Libby Award for Book of the Year - Adult Fiction (runner up) : James
	2025 Dublin Literary Award (longlist) : James
	2025 British Book Award Fiction Book of the Year (nominee) : James
	2025 British Book Award Author of the Year (nominee)
	2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction (finalist) : James
	2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (longlist) : James
	2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (finalist) : James
	2024 Booker Prize (shortlist) : James
	2023 Dublin Literary Award (nominee) : The Trees
	2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (nominee) : Dr. No
	2022 Booker Prize (shortlist) : The Trees
	2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (nominee) : Telephone
	2014 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee) : Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
	2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (nominee) : Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Percival Everett recommends

Small Ceremonies (2025)
Kyle Edwards
"The geographical and familial landscape of the ironically named Whiteway clan yields a subtle and fascinating portrait of growing up Native in Manitoba. The understatement underscores the intensity and contradictions of outgrowing your home and self. This is a truly fine novel."

Playground (2024)
Richard Powers
"Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep, and alive."

Come to the Window (2024)
Howard Norman
"Have you ever gone to hear live music and when the first note sounds you say, 'Wow'? And when the performance is over, you look at your partner and say, 'Holy shit.' That's Come to the Window. The art, the flow, the wisdom of this work are unmatched. This is Howard Norman at his best."

Beautiful Days (2024)
Zach Williams
"Beautiful Days is a remarkable collection. These stories are full of irony and absurdity, but are never sleight, glib or waggish. Zach Williams paints us into every story with quick, deft strokes and then unfolds, with a scarily confident hand, the rest of the canvas, full of surprises and truths and stuff we never imagined."

The New Naturals (2023)
Gabriel Bump
"A Blithedale Romance for the 21st century, only less naive and more complex. Race, class and gender collide in all the ways they do in the so-called real world. Bump's prose is fresh and frequently surprising. This is funny, sad, sad-funny and funny-sad and just plain smart."

Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023)
Jonathan Lethem
"The levels of mystery here astound. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and then the parts decide to act alone and challenge the whole. Lethem is not only interrogating the form of the crime novel, but the venture of storytelling itself. All of this while remaining a joy to read, full of strange characters and expertly rendered place. This brilliant, genre-defying work will leave certainly a mark."

The Survivalists (2023)
Kashana Cauley
"Kashana Cauley's novel The Survivalists is beautifully written. With language that is smart, economical and clear she renders a story that is about relationships and our culture. I love this character Aretha, her observations, her arguments, her irony. This a nice piece of work."

Life Is Everywhere (2022)
Lucy Ives
"If Lucy Ives is as smart as her novel Life Is Everywhere, then I am in complete awe. The novel is challenging in all the best ways and an absolute joy to read. How many books in one and yet one book. This is great writing."

If I Survive You (2022)
Jonathan Escoffery
"These are superb stories about identity, family and place. There is a beautiful economy in the telling that never sacrifices the depth, complexity and richness of the worlds these characters inhabit. Jonathan Escoffery's is a strong, much needed new voice in our literature."

Golden Age (2022)
Wang Xiaobo
"Until reading Wang Xiaobo's Golden Age, I had not seen a work that captures the ironies and contradictions Wang Er endures living in a communist country in a decidedly capitalist world. Just my saying this sounds academic, but the novel is not academic. It's hilarious, loose, surprising and so smart. I am reminded of Heller's Catch 22, but whereas circularity was the enemy for Yossarian, it might well be Wang Er's ally."

The Infinite Future (2018)
Tim Wirkus
"Tim Wirkus has channeled the ghost of Laurence Sterne and the imagination of Rene Magritte. From the foreword on I was taken by this novel. Entertaining, fun and very, very smart, the story is everywhere at once, but never lost. This is a house of mirrors worth entering."

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