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    Edward Ball was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1958 and raised in New Orleans, Florida, and Charleston, South Carolina. He attended Brown University, graduating in 1982, and studied film in graduate school. In 1985 Edward moved to New York City and became a freelance journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines about movies, art, design, and books. His first book, Slaves in the Family, an account of his family’s history as slaveholders in South Carolina, received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1998. 

     In six books of narrative nonfiction, Edward has told stories about film history, slavery, gender assignment, genetics, black family history, and white supremacy.

     His book Life of a Klansman (August 2020) tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, Edward’s great-great-grandfather, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the late 1800s.

     Edward has taught at Yale University and the State University of New York. He has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute, at Harvard, and the New York Public Library, and is the recipient of a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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