Jesmyn Ward, prize-winning author, has 2 new novels planned

NEW YORK – National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward has her next two novels planned.

On Wednesday, Scribner told The Associated Press that Ward will write an adult novel about an enslaved woman sent from the Carolinas to New Orleans. She will then work on her first novel for middle graders, a “magical adventure” featuring a Southern black woman with “special powers.”

Titles and publication dates for the two books have not yet been determined. A Mississippi native, Ward won the National Book Award last fall for her novel about a black family in the contemporary South, “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” She also won the National Book Award in 2011 for “Salvage the Bones.”