Jason Mott

Jason Mott was born in 1981 in Whiteville, North Carolina, and grew up in a small town in the American South. He earned a BA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and an MFA in Creative Writing from UNCW's graduate programme. His debut novel The Returned (2013) became an international bestseller and was adapted into the ABC television series Resurrection. Mott's novels include The Returned (2013), The Wonder of All Things (2014), and Hell of a Book (2021). Hell of a Book, a novel that weaves together the story of a Black author on a surreal book tour and the life of a Black boy in rural North Carolina, won the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. The novel explores race, identity, police violence against Black Americans, and the power and limits of storytelling itself.