Percival Everett

Everett studied philosophy at the University of Miami and worked as a jazz musician, a ranch hand, and a high-school teacher before publishing his first novel at twenty-seven, beginning a career of restless output that now spans dozens of books ranging across westerns, detective fiction, satire, and literary experiment, often within a single year.

Erasure, his satire of a novelist forced to write a 'street' bestseller to survive, drew relatively little mainstream attention on its 2001 publication despite critical admiration; its 2023 film adaptation, American Fiction, won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and belatedly made Everett widely known. James, his 2024 retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved Jim's perspective, won the National Book Award the same year.

He has taught for decades at the University of Southern California and raises horses and mules at his California ranch, famously avoiding interviews and publicity.