Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones will join the English department faculty next year to teach creative writing, the outgoing department chair announced Tuesday.

Professor Jeffrey Cohen noted on the department’s blog that Jones was the inaugural Wang Visiting Professor of Contemporary English Literature last spring, when he taught creative writing and hosted a month-long book club.

“Edward is 100 percent D.C. and I doubt he ever would have relocated,” Cohen said. “We at GW had an opportunity in hiring him that no Ivy League institution could match.”

About attracting the famed writer to GW’s faculty, Cohen said, “There wasn’t a lot of convincing to be done: I feel like our GW students and faculty did that already, just by being themselves, when he was in residence during the spring semester.”