Information

Membership Number: FCA3407

Membership Type: Fellowship

Division: Humanities

Corresponding Email: ***erett@usc.edu

Homepage(s): https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/percival-everett/ 

Present and Previous Positions

Distinguished Professor of English, University of Southern California (named Distinguished Professor of English in 2007)

Professor of English, University of Southern California (from 1998);

Professor, University of California, Riverside (1992–1998)

Professor, University of Notre Dame (1988–1991)

Associate Professor, University of Kentucky (1985–1988)

Fields of Scholarship and Research Interests

American literature; African American literature; contemporary fiction; critical theory; poetics; philosophy and literature

Professor Everett’s work occupies a singular place in contemporary letters. Although best known as a novelist, he has long worked across multiple literary forms, including short fiction, poetry, and essays. His writing repeatedly returns to major questions of representation, interpretation, authorship, race, violence, and the philosophical limits of language, while refusing reduction to any single school or program. USC describes his research broadly in relation to American studies and critical theory, a formulation that helps explain the intellectual breadth of a body of work that is at once literary, philosophical, and formally experimental. 

Over several decades, he has produced a large and remarkably varied body of writing, including novels such as Erasure, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Telephone, The Trees, Dr. No, and James. His fiction is often noted for its wit, irony, and structural daring, yet it is equally animated by serious reflection on American literary traditions, racial discourse, and the possibilities and failures of public language. Official academy materials describe his work as linguistically playful while remaining philosophically serious, a combination that captures both his intellectual authority and his literary originality. 

In recent years, Everett’s literary standing has received especially broad public recognition. His novel James, a reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction after receiving the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2024 Kirkus Prize, and a place on the 2024 Booker Prize shortlist. These honors reflect not merely the success of a single book, but the culmination of a long career that has made him one of the most important and original American writers of his generation.

Honors, Awards and Other Membership

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for James (2025).

National Book Award for Fiction, for James (2024).

Kirkus Prize, for James (2024).

Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters (elected 2023).

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2016).

Guggenheim Fellow.

National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2014).

Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, National Book Critics Circle (2022).

Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, for Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2010), and Telephone (2021).

Academy Award in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, for Erasure.

Pushcart Prize, for “The Appropriation of Cultures” (1997). 

Selected Publications

Everett, Percival. Suder. New York: Viking Press, 1983.

Everett, Percival. Walk Me to the Distance. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1985.

Everett, Percival. Zulus. Sag Harbor, NY: Permanent Press, 1990.

Everett, Percival. God’s Country. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994.

Everett, Percival. Watershed. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1996.

Everett, Percival. Glyph. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1999.

Everett, Percival. Erasure. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001; reissued, Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2011.

Everett, Percival. I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2009.

Everett, Percival. Telephone. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2020.

Everett, Percival. The Trees. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2021.

Everett, Percival. Dr. No. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, forthcoming in CV; subsequently published before 2025.

Everett, Percival. James. New York: Doubleday, 2024. 

Other Information

CV.pdf