Ward won the National Book Award in 2011 for her novel Salvage the Bones and again in 2017 for her book Sing, Unburied Sing (Scribner, 2017). She is the only woman to win two National Book Awards. Before joining the faculty at Tulane University in 2014, Ward was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama. Ward holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan.