Novelist Jervey Tervalon was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but moved to the Jefferson Park/Crenshaw area of Los Angeles, California, with his family when he was a young boy. After a nun had decided he was retarded, his mother transferred him to a public school where he finished his education. He attended the University of California, at Santa Barbara where he graduated with honors with a BA in Literature. He returned to Los Angeles where he taught at Locke High school for five years in what was, arguably one of the worst schools in Los Angeles. He returned to college and received his MFA from UC Irvine where he studied with Thomas Keneally and Oakley Hall. His thesis project became the novel Understand This for which he won the 1994 New Voices Award from Quality Paper Books was based on his experiences teaching at Locke. His novel, Dead above Ground told in the voice of his mother, about his family in New Orleans and the tragic murder of cousin, spent two months on the LA Times Bestsellers list, as did his novel All the Trouble You Need.
Currently, Tervalon teaches writing and literature at Occidental College where he is the Remsen Bird Writer in Residence and at the Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA where he teaches journalism and creative nonfiction.
Tervalon writes about race and education for the Los Angeles Times, and, he has written a series of essays on Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it has wrought on his family for the LA Weekly.
He’s served on the board of PEN USA for the past six years and is a founding member of the Ghetto Lit Consortium and is an aspiring stand up comedian and film maker.
Honors, Awards: Disney Screen-writing Fellow, 1992; Quality Paper Book Club's New Voices Award, 1994; Finalist, Discover New Writers/Barnes and Noble Award, 1994; Honorable Mention, Pushcart Prize, 1996; Gold Crown Award from the Pasadena Arts Council, Remsen Bird Artist in Residence, 2001;. Josephine Miles National Literary Award for Excellence in Multicultural Literature, 2001; California Arts Fellowship, 2003.
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