Percival Everett
Percival Leonard Everett is an American author and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
His writing often crosses multiple genres, including westerns, satirical fiction, mysteries, and thrillers. He often explores race and identity in the United States. Several of his novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize and have won multiple awards, including the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. His novel Erasure was adapted into the award-winning film American Fiction.
Percival was born in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and named after his father. The family moved to Columbia, South Carolina when he was an infant. Percival earned a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Miami. He later earned an M.A. in fiction from Brown University in 1982. He moved out west to Los Angeles, where he began teaching at the University of Southern California while also working on ranches, where he learned to train horses and mules. He credits horses with teaching him patience. “I don’t get stressed out,” he told The Guardian. “I think that’s from being on horses. You can’t calm down a 1,200-pound animal by getting excited.”
Percival has numerous skills and hobbies he has picked up over the years, including painting, woodworking, and playing jazz. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the novelist Danzy Senna, and their two children.
