(BLACK FICTION) Edward P. Jones is the author of the historical novel The Known World, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2004 and is set in Virginia just before the Civil War. What distinguishes Jones's book from others that examine the institution of American slavery is that it focuses on the ownership of black slaves by black freemen. Jones's short stories regularly appear in the New Yorker, and he is certainly one of the leading lights of contemporary black American literature. (Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, 386-4636, www.spl.org. 7 pm, free.)