Skip to main content

Mitchell S. Jackson

Biography

Mitchell S. Jackson

Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel won a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His honors include fellowships from TED, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN, NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts), and the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Tin House and elsewhere. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Writing at New York University.

Mitchell S. Jackson

Books by Mitchell S. Jackson

by Mitchell S. Jackson - Memoir, Nonfiction

SURVIVAL MATH explores gangs and guns, near-death experiences, sex work, masculinity, composite fathers, the concept of “hustle” and the destructive power of addiction --- all framed within the story of Mitchell Jackson, his family and his community. The primary narrative, focused on understanding the antecedents of Jackson’s family’s experience, is complemented by survivor files, which feature photographs and riveting short narratives of several of Jackson’s male relatives.

by Mitchell S. Jackson - Fiction

Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighborhood in America’s whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In his commanding autobiographical novel, Mitchell writes what it was to come of age in that time and place. THE RESIDUE YEARS switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace, who, fresh out of a drug treatment program, is trying to stay clean and get her kids back.