Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of National Bestseller, The American Daughters, a New York Times Editor’s Choice published by One World Random House. He is the recipient of the 2023 Louisiana Writer Award and the Black Rock Senegal Residency. He also wrote The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021. It is the 2023 One Book One New Orleans selection. The book was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and longlisted for the Story Prize. The book was also selected to represent Louisiana at the 2023 National Book Festival. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. The novel was also a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Ruffin was the 2022 Grand Marshal of the Mardi Gras Krewe of House Floats and recipient of the 2022 Louisiana Board of Regents ATLAS grant. Ruffin has taught at numerous residencies and conferences including Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Maine Media, Randolph College MFA, and Longleaf. Ruffin was a co-curator of the Read My World Literary Festival (Amsterdam) in 2017 and a contributor in 2022. Ruffin is part of the Artist Network of Narrative 4, an organization dedicated to aiding the educational opportunities of young people.

Artist Statement

My work is Southern. My work is Black. My work seeks liberation. I’m a former corporate attorney. I left that career when I became disgusted with the hypocrisy of a field that didn’t seem to benefit my community at all. I’m a native New Orleanian and decided it was time to use my other skills to make a difference. As such, I’ve pivoted to telling stories about my hometown, a heavily Africanist city since its inception in 1718. I did this because I realized that most of the heralded stories coming out of the city were by white visitors like William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Sherwood Anderson. New Orleans has so much flavor that flows from the soul of my people. Our music, our foodways, our voices are one of a kind. My mission has been to make stories about us in our own voices. Stories designed to show the beauty and majesty of the folk who actually made and make New Orleans a world city. Accordingly, I’ve relentlessly published dozens of essays, short stories, and poems as well as two books for the purpose of showing all the humanity and complexity of the place I love. My long-term hope is that my work will inspire and support the next generation of young, Black New Orleans writers to tell their own stories.