Percival Leonard Everett II (born December 22, 1956)[1] is an American writer[2] and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

When the younger Everett was still an infant, the family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where he lived through high school.

"[14] Cutting Lisa (1986; re-issued 2000) begins with John Livesey meeting a man who has performed a Caesarean section.

In 1990, Everett published two books: Zulus, which combines the grotesque and the apocalypse; and For Her Dark Skin, a new version of Medea by the Greek playwright Euripides.

[12] In 1996, Everett published two books: Watershed has a contemporary western setting, in which the loner hydrologist Robert Hawkes meets a Native American "small person", who helps him come to terms with the inter-relation of people.

Vlepo, Dionysos's assistant, is forced to undergo a "frenzy" of odd activities, including becoming lice and bedroom curtains at different times during the story, which he narrates.

The novel, a metafictional piece, revolves around the main character's decision to write an outrageous novella, based among the urban poor and dissolute, titled My Pafology.

[18] A History of the African-American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid (2004), is an epistolary novel that chronicles the characters Percival Everett and James Kincaid as they work with US Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) (occasionally) and his aide's crazy assistant, Barton Wilkes.

Throughout the rest of the novel, Street undergoes an odyssey of self-discovery about what being alive really means, exploring religion, revelation, faith, zealotry, love, family, media sensationalism, and death.

[21] Wounded: A Novel (2005) tells the story of John Hunt, a horse trainer confronted with hate crimes against a homosexual and a Native American.

The Water Cure (2007) is a novel about Ishmael Kidder, who has had a successful career as a romance novelist until the death of his daughter, when his life takes a dark turn.

The protagonist, named Not Sidney Poitier, referencing a physical resemblance to the famous actor, meets challenges relating to identity and racial segregation across North America.

The story "Big" returns to the character of Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town.

Eight years later, the same press published The Trees, a satirical novel about historic and contemporary lynchings in Mississippi, the South and across the US.

[28] In 2023, the film American Fiction was released, with a screenplay adapted by its director Cord Jefferson from Everett's 2001 novel Erasure.

[29] James,[30] published by Doubleday in 2024, is a re-imagining of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway slave character Jim.

[31] Everett humanizes the character, who goes by James, re-inventing him as a wise and literate man, who has conversations with enlightenment philosophers in his dreams and teaches other enslaved people to read.