Debut Novel by OU Professor Chosen for Oprah’s Book Club

Winfrey founded her book club in 1996 and she has partnered with Apple since 1999. An Oprah’s Book Club episode featuring an in-depth discussion between Winfrey and Jeffers is available on Apple TV+.

Jeffers’ novel traces centuries of Black history through a family in the American South and its contemporary narrator, young Ailey Paul Garfield. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, named for the Black scholar and activist, also received advance praise from Angie Thomas, Jacqueline Woodson and Stephanie Powell Watts, among others.

“I was so enraptured by the story of this modern Black family, and how the author Honorée Fanonne Jeffers wove the larger fabric of historical trauma through the family’s silence through generations,” Winfrey said in a statement to the AP. “It’s a combination of historical and modern and it consumed me.”

Jeffers is a poet, novelist, critic and scholar whose work examines the intersection of culture, religion, history and family. She was born in Kokomo, Indiana, and grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta. She holds degrees from Talladega College and the University of Alabama, and she has served on the OU faculty since 2002.

Jeffers is the author of six books (five of poetry) and she has championed the stories and achievements of Black women, including Winfrey. Earlier this year, her book of poetry, “The Age of Phillis,” was honored with the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry. A 2021 USA Mellon Fellow, Jeffers in February was named one of the 60 fellows in the United States Artists’ class of honorees, who receive $50,000 each in unrestricted funds. She won the 2018 Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction for her book The Glory Gets, and in 2020 was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame; both notations recognize lifetime achievement. She also has been awarded fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Aspen Summer Words Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress.

“I first encountered the beauty, brilliance and empathy of Ms. Oprah Winfrey from afar, by watching her talk show on my television in the 1980s,” Jeffers said in a statement to the AP. “She made me believe that so many great things were possible for a young, African American woman like me. That I could do anything if I just set my hands, mind and spirit to the task. As a creative writer, it was my secret dream that I would one day write a book that this ‘phenomenal woman’ – to quote from the great poet, Dr. Maya Angelou – would read, enjoy and present to the members of her book club.”

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is available on Apple Books in both ebook and audiobook formats. It is also available at other online retailers and bookstores.