Jeffrey Blount

Jeffrey Blount is an award-winning author and an Emmy award-winning television director with 34 years of network television experience.

Jeffrey’s most recent novel, The Emancipation of Evan Walls, is the winner of the 2021 National Indie Excellence Award for African American Fiction, the 2019 Readers Favorite Book Award, the 2019 American Bookfest Best Book Award and a Shelf Unbound 2019 Notable Book. He is also the author of Almost Snow White, winner of the 2013 USA Best Book Awards and Hating Heidi Foster, winner of the 2013 Readers Favorite Book Award for YA Literature.

Jeffrey is also an accomplished public speaker, commenting on issues of race, social justice and writing. He writes about issues of social justice, having op-ed pieces published in the Washington Post, TheGrio.com, and other publications. He was also a contributor to HuffPost.

During his broadcast journalism career, Jeffrey directed a decade of Meet The Press, helping take that show from a half hour to an hour and from the third rated Sunday morning political program to the top-rated show. He directed the Sunday Today Show, the Washington portions of NBC Nightly News for over fifteen years and eleven years of The Chris Matthews Show. He is the first African American to direct The Today Show. He has been a part of directing major Washington events including the State of the Union and rebuttal responses, the funerals of President Reagan and Ford, presidential addresses, press conferences and election night coverage.

In 2017 and 2018, Jeffrey served as Journalist in Residence and Shapiro Fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University.
Recently, Jeffrey earned his university’s alumni achievement award – the VCU Alumni Star – for his professional achievements as a director at NBC, script writer and author. He is also an inductee of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. He also served as a member of the advisory board at the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University, his alma mater. At present, Jeffrey serves on the National Board of Reading Partners. A Virginia native, he graduated from VCU with a degree in Mass Communications/Broadcast Journalism.