2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards Winners with guest speaker Tayari Jones at September 13th ceremony in New York City. (Front, L-R: Lisa Chen and Alison C. Rollins. Back, L-R: Lydia Conklin, Karen Outen, Tayari Jones, Gabriela Garcia, Chelsea Bieker. Photo by Star Black.)

Tayari Jones is honored to have delivered remarks at the 2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards–the only national literary foundation dedicated to awarding exclusively female writers with outstanding contributions to fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

In her remarks to this year’s recipients, Ms. Jones writes, “Alice Walker famously urged us to ‘be no one’s darling.’ I would like to expand on this and push you to be no one’s darling, not even your own.”

To read Tayari Jones’s speech in full, click here.