Jones Wins NBCC

The National Book Critics Circle winners were announced tonight and Edward P. Jones’ The Known World won in the fiction category.

[T]he author, a former proofreader for Tax Notes, a trade magazine, took years to get going on “The Known World.” He acknowledges being a slow worker who doesn’t like writing anything until he has the story constructed in his mind. He also had a computer incompatible with other online systems. And sometimes, frankly, he didn’t feel like writing. “There were days I decided I wasn’t in the mood, so I just put it off,” he told The Associated Press last fall.
In accepting the award Thursday, Jones said he felt so embarrassed about the delay that when he finally finished he couldn’t bear to tell his agent, Eric Simonoff, on the phone. Instead, he sent a letter to Simonoff, who duly left a complimentary message on Jones’ answering machine.
“I still have that message,” Jones said.

Read the AP report here.