Ladee Hubbard

Ladee Hubbard is a writer from New Orleans. Her first novel, The Talented Ribkins, was published in 2017. It received both the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Novel. Her work has been published in Oxford American, VQR, Guernica, Callaloo, and others. She is a recipient of a Gulf South Writer in the Woods fellowship and has received additional fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers Conference, the Sacatar Foundation and the Sustainable Arts Foundation among others. Her second novel, The Rib King, was published by HarperCollins in 2020 and her new collection of stories, The Last Suspicious Holdout, was released by Amistad in 2022. She is a recipient of a 2021 Berlin Prize and a 2022 Harvard-Radcliffe Institute Fellowship.

The Value of Support

"The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award provided me with the financial support I needed to complete my first novel, The Talented Ribkins. It was also an enormous honor to have my work placed in company with so many other distinguished writers whose work I respected and admired. The award is also important because it represents a significant acknowledgement of the unique challenges women face in the publishing world. I was already the mother of three children when I began writing my book and was at times discouraged to realize of how much of the process through which literary careers are established is inherently biased against women, particularly care givers. Because of that, the existence of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards was profoundly meaningful to me long before I received one. I will always be extremely honored to be a recipient."